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Botany and Zoology. 123 



ded to, and which is eminently characteristic both of the Canaries and 

 Madeira. 



The Kleinia, Euphorbia and Plocarna are three plants which the 

 voyager recognizes long before reaching the shore ; and ihey are so 

 sing ar, whether as regards habit, habitat, or botanical characters, that 

 the opportunity of seeing them in a wild state, even from the sea, must 

 be deemed a privilege by the botanist. 



Cape de Verd Islands. — The voyage, from the Canaries to the Cape 

 de Verd Islands, generally presents a hiatus in the journals of those 

 sea-faring naturalists who have followed this route. Before arriving at 

 the Canaries, landsmen have scarcely recovered from the novelty of 

 ship-board and its effects : nor has there been time, since leaving these 

 islands, to become thoroughly inured to the monotony of a sailing life. 

 At first sight, the Cape de Verd Islands are very disappointing. It is 

 true that we had passed from an extra-tropical latitude to far within the 

 tropics; but the change in position was not accompanied with a corres- 

 ponding difference, still less with luxuriance, in the vegetation and 

 scenery. Yet these apparently barren islands have associations of 

 £reat interest; and their examination yields both pleasure and profit. 

 They afford us the first glimpses of the fever-smitten coast of Africa, 

 and of slavery. Even the black man here, deprived of freedom, and 

 an alien to the land in which, though guiltless, he is a prisoner for life, 

 l s apt to be regarded as a mere object of natural history by his Cau- 

 casian fellow-creature; who, before he has time for reflection, may 

 perhaps be excused for pausing to consider, whether a being so differ- 

 ent m features and social position, be really of the same origin as him- 

 self; whether, in short, the poor African is a race of the same stock, 

 °r a species apart. 



There are many other circumstances, connected with these islands, 

 calculated to keep the mind busy while in their neighborhood. They 

 form the western extreme of the Old World, of what was the whole 

 world to civilized man, till within the last very few hundred years; 

 a "d hence these, the North Cape and Cape of Good Hope, constitute 

 ( he three salient points in the geography of the eastern Atlantic. In 

 jnany of their physical features, they form a continuation of the great 

 Sahara desert;" that mysterious blank on our maps, upon whose sea of 

 fand so many of our venturesome countrymen have embarked, to be 

 h eard of no more. The hitherto unexplored mountains rise eight thou- 

 sand feet and upwards above the sea, in serried ridges and isolated 

 j*aks, promising a rich harvest to some botanist, who may in these 

 h, gher and cooler parts of the islands rely on immunity irom disease 

 a <)d on a temperate climate. There he may expect to find new types 

 of Plants ; for ihe Mountain Flora of Western Tropical Africa is wholly 

 unknown; and of its probable nature even we can form no guess.^ lo 

 conclude, the Linn^an axiom of - semper aliquid novi ex Africa has 

 n *ver yet proved false. A naturalist cannot see the shores oi that 

 ^ntinent without feeling that no other spur is required to exertion, in a 

 ne '<* to which such a motto still applies with so much force. 



* On the fundamental type and homologies of the Vertebrate Mel- 

 € ' on >' by Prof. Owen, (from the Literary Gazette; Ann Mag. Nat 

 Hl »-i xix, 202, March, I847.)-The Professor commenced by alluding 



