332 
lastly, a very curious species of Phallus, 
decorated with a wide loosely pendulous 
net hanging from the inside of the hood, 
reaching to the ground and covering the 
stem like a veil, (P. Demonum, Hook. Bot. 
of Beech. Voy. v.1. p. 78.120.) The result 
of this second excursion more than con- 
rms my previous calculation of the riches 
of these hills, in distinct vegetable: forms. 
I am now disposed to think that two thou- 
sand species may be found within the li- 
mits assigned above to fifteen hundred. 
I have come to this conclusion, from having 
extended my excursion on one occasion to 
a more distant part of the hills, and found 
many more new plants than on any former 
day. Hitherto, I had explored only the 
northern slopes; but on this last occasion 
I examined the southern side, and certainly 
paid for my temerity by having to stay in 
the jungle all night, having gone too far 
and lost my way in returning home. I was, 
however, well repaid for my privations by 
an unusually large harvest of good things. 
The hills here are not like those of Clova, 
for you can rarely see a hundred yards 
before you, on account of jungle. I have 
re-examined the Macroclinia, and suspect 
it is too closely allied to Savia to be se- 
parated ; differing only in having the fila- 
ments united into a tube the whole length 
of the styles, and in the want of the fleshy 
mass to which, in Savia, the ovules are 
attached.—R. W 
VEGETATION OF THE CANARY 
ISLANDS. 
_ WE promised, in a late number of this 
journal, to offer to our readers some ex- 
tracts from the early Livraisons of Messrs. 
Webb and Berthelot’s Natural History of 
_ the Canary Isles. We now redeem that 
pledge, and we think we cannot present a 
fairer specimen of the work nor a more 
‘instructive portion than the very first 
Chapter. 
NEGETATION OF THE CANARY ISLANDS. 
ON THE GENERAL ASPECT OF VEGETA- 
^ TION IN THE CANARY ISLANDS. 
* I have seen Nature in many pur of the T" 
Zone wearing a more rich an 
here; but after having surveyed the dion of the 
attractive, more varied and more harmonious, owing 
to the distribution of its masses of verdure and its 
rocks." — Humboldt. 
THE Canary Islands, from their prox- 
imity to the Tropics, are situated in the 
vegetation : 
of the energy of the Torrid and the fresh- 
ness of the Temperate Zones. The heat 
of the sun is combined with the most active 
principles to fertilize a soil which would 
otherwise have been condemned, by vol- 
canic agency, to utter sterility; peculiar 
g , 
and the virgin soil having first produced a - 
peculiar Flora, is afterwards endowed, by 
the influences of climate, with the plants of 
both hemispheres, that become naturalized 
there. ose aboriginal species which 
grow spontaneously in these Atlantic 
Islands belong mostly to European genera, 
but they are of longer duration, and are 
more woody, frequently even arborescent. 
There are some others, also, which wear 
other forms and a different aspect; many 
es: single types of genera to which there 
is nothing analogous, as Visnea, Phyllis, 
Bosea, Drusa, Plocama, Canarina, &e. ; 
Semperviva, Bystropogons, Echiums, &c. 
Among these varied vegetables, some are 
marked with an African character, while 
others, though fewer in number, exhibit 
some resemblance to the productions of 
America; the larger Euphorbias, the 
Palms, the Zygophylla, Aizoons, 9n 
Kleinias belonging to the former class, and 
the Laurels, Ardisias, Behmerias, Drusa, 
and several kinds of Ferns, to the latter. 
Thus the Flora of the Canaries seems 10 - 
prove the migration of the plants from out | 
