54 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 



plants, but few varieties of species ; or comparatively few 

 plants, but amongst these great variety. 



I may state in illustration that at the Cape of Good 

 Hope we have a rich flora, but a rich vegetation would 

 scarcely be a correct description of what is here to be 

 seen. Of coniferous plants, such as are the cabbage and 

 the wallflower, there are 17 genera, and one of them, 

 the heliophila, is represented by upwards of 60 species. 

 There are upwards of 100 species of crassula. Of the 

 fig marigold, or mesembryanthum, there are upwards of 

 300 species. Among Cape bulbs there are of iris-like 

 plants alone upwards of 20 genera all of them, I may 

 say, represented by several species. Of Cape heaths 

 there are between 300 and 400 species described. Of 

 pea like plants there are upwards of 80 genera ; and of 

 some of these, from 25 to upwards of 100 species are 

 described by Dr Harvey as flora capensis ; and of compos- 

 tae, or daisy-like plants, there are 154 genera, and of these 

 there are 1000 different species. 



We have here a rich flora, but it does not follow that 

 there is a rich and luxuriant vegetation. Continuous turf 

 is almost unknown ; bush there is in plenty ; and there are 

 fields of cereals and mesembryanthema, but there is 

 nothing like the luxuriance of vegetation to be seen in 

 many a wood and thicket, and winding lane in Britain. 



And different conclusions must be arrived at according 

 as we may adopt one or other of different principles in 

 estimating the richness of a district in its flora and vege- 

 tation according as we look to the number of orders of 

 plants growing there, or to the number of genera of plants 

 belonging to any one or more orders, or to the number of 

 species of any of these genera, or to the number of specimens 

 of these genera and species. 



By Schleiden, writing on this subject, it is remarked : 

 ' The information we have obtained in regard to the so- 

 called habitations the place of growth and the native 

 country of a plant has enabled us to give an orderly 

 arrangement to our conceptions relative to the distribu- 



