I 



ON THE ISLAND OF SOCOTRA. 485 



of the natural history of the island. Various causes delayed the sending 

 out of the expedition, and it was not until January, 1879, that I left this 

 country, returning again in April, having spent, with two companions — 

 Lieutenant Cockijui'n, 6th Royals, whose regiment was at Aden, and 

 Alexander Scott, a gardener from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 

 who accompanied me from England — nearly seven weeks on the island. 

 At the meeting of this Association at Swansea last year, a report 

 of the proceedings of the expedition was read, and is printed in the 

 Association Reports. At that time the collections brought home were 

 . only in course of distribution for examination. Now a certain portion of 

 them has been worked out, although the whole is not completed, and I 

 purpose to-day to lay before the Association a brief account of the island 

 as we saw it, and the results of our investigations so far as they have been 

 carried out. Ere doing so I have one remark to make. Although so long 

 a period elapsed between the evacuation of the island by the British and 

 the date of our expedition last year, yet we have already been followed to 

 the island (though the fact of our visit was not known to them) by the 

 German traveller and botanist Dr. Schwcinfurth, and some companions. 

 They went in early spring of this year, and returned in May, having had, 

 unfortunately, bad voyages both going and returning. Thus, after an 

 interval of forty years, Socotra has been visited in two successive years by 

 exploring parties. But what I desire to make public just now is this, 

 that Dr. Schwcinfurth, on learning that I had been to Socotra, at once 

 offered to send to me his botanical collections, to be worked up along 

 with my own — an act of generosity which I think deserves the fullest 

 recognition, and which will enable me to bring out a much more complete 

 account of the botany of the island. 



The surface features of Socotra at the present time are those of an 

 island mountainous in the extreme. The shore line on its southern aspect 

 is, as the map shows, a tolerably continuous one, unbroken by deep inlets 

 or bays. On the northern side occur a few shallow bays at the mouths 

 of the streams, which afford the only anchorage to be obtained around 

 the island, but no one of them is safe at all seasons of the year. On all 

 sides the hills rise with considerable abruptness, over a wide area 

 forming bold perpendicular cliiis of several hundred feet in height, whose 

 base is washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean ; but at other places 

 leaving plains varying in breadth up to as much as five miles between 

 their base and the shore. On the south side of the island is the largest 

 of these shore plains — Nogad — which, extending nearly the whole length of 

 the island, is for miles covered with dunes of blown sand. On the north 

 these plains occur chiefly at the moutlis of the streams, and are the sites 

 of the only places which may be called towns. 



The internal hilly part of the island may be roughly and shortly 

 described as a wide undulating and intersected limestone plateau of an 

 altitude averaging 1,000 feet, which flanks on the west, south, and east 

 a nucleus of granitic peaks approaching 4,000 feet high. The whole of 

 this hilly region is deeply cut into by ravines and valleys. These in the 

 rainy season are occupied by roaring torrents, but the majority of them 

 remain empty during the dry season. There are, however, many peren- 

 nial streams on the island ; especially in the central granitic region, 

 where amongst the hills the most charming bubbling streams, dashing 

 over boulders in a series of cascades, or purling gently over a pebbly 

 shingle, make it hard to believe that one is in such proximity to the desert 



