172 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



Oak, which to our surprise we find growing luxuriantly, 

 the character of vegetation there reminds us in but few re- 

 spects of what we saw in the Northern Sub-Tropical Zone, 

 or of what we have just left in Chili ; so perfectly unlike 

 anything else it is, for the most part, that it would be 

 worse than useless to enumerate the names of a dozen 

 unknown trees which compose the forests there; their 

 names and natures must be sought in botanical works. 

 The almost entire absence of Palms in the extreme South 

 of Africa is worth remarking ; one species only is mentioned 

 by Schouw, as growing in Cape Colony, namely Phcenix re- 

 clinata. There are in their stead some peculiar-looking 

 trees, which, though not very much like them, are considered 

 as their representatives, called Zamias, or Encepkalarti. 

 They have thick, unshapely, pithy trunks, of a very singu- 

 lar appearance ; and " as they grow in the desert and .barren 

 table-lands, where the ostrich and gazelle take up their 

 abode, they exercise the greatest influence over the cha- 

 racter of the vegetation in those places." There is some- 

 thing very un- Palm-like in the stiff, fleshy, bluish-green, 

 antler-like leaflets, bristling up like ckevaux-de-frise along 

 each side of the long stems which diverge from the top of 

 the clumsy-looking trunk. 



