PREFACKH, 
THE present section of Volume V. completes the description of 
the MonocotyLepons of South Africa to which Volumes VI. 
and VII. are devoted. Its preparation has been long postponed 
in the hope that the Orchidew might be undertaken by Dr. 
Botus who had made a continuous study of the South African 
species from 1882 to the close of his life thirty years later. 
No botanist has ever succeeded in examining or in illustrating 
with his own hand so many of them in a living state. 
The “Icones Orchidearum Austro-Africanarum Extratropi- 
carum” in two volumes, commenced in 1892, and the revision 
of the last proof-sheets of which occupied him “on the very eve 
of his death” on May 25th, 1911, are a worthy and permanent 
monument of his labours. Failing health had compelled him to 
abandon the elaboration of the Ericacew beyond the vast genus 
Erica, in which the late Professor GuTHRIE had collaborated 
with him, and it equally deterred him from attempting the study 
of the intricate problems which are involved in the synonymy of 
so many of the imperfectly described species of South African 
Orchideer. 
In the event I was reluctantly compelled to acquiesce, and I 
entrusted their elaboration to Mr. R. A. Rotre, A.L.S., Assistant 
in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who has 
long made the order his special study, and had previously 
contributed the Orchidew to the seventh volume of the “ Flora of 
_ Tropical Africa.” 
I am indebted for much friendly aid to Lieut.-Colonel-Sir 
Davw Prat, C.M.G., C.LE., F.R.S., Director of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, and my acknowledgments are also due to 
Mr. C. H. Waricut, A.LS., and to Mr. N. E. Browy, A.LS., 
A 
