100 AN IMAGINARY EIVER. oh. v. 



spread throughout Eastern Africa and Arabia. The taste- 

 less gum known as the gum-arabic of commerce is probably 

 produced by several of these species. Like its allies, the 

 South Marocco plant flowers late in the year, after the 

 first autumn rains, and ripens its pods during the winter. 

 Hence, as seen by us in spring, without flower or fruit, 

 there was little to distinguish this from several of the 

 other forms of this group.' 



Among herbaceous plants that attracted our notice 

 was Glaucium corniculatum (here always orange, and 

 never crimson as it is in Palestine), with Campanula 

 dichotoma, only just coming into flower, whilst two or 

 three degrees farther north, in Palestine and Syria, it 

 usually flowers three weeks earlier. More interesting, 

 as being one of the few local plants common to South 

 Marocco and the Canary Islands, was the Linaria sagittata 

 { Antirrhinum sagittatum of Poiret), very unlike any 

 other toadflax in the form of its leaves and its much 

 branched twining stems that spread far and vi^ide over the 

 low bushes. 



Although the air was cooled by a pleasant breeze, the 

 direct rays of the sun were very powerful, and we were 

 glad to make a short halt for luncheon near a well, where 

 a small ruined building of rough masonry gave a narrow 

 fringe of shadow. Eesuming our route, we soon after re- 

 crossed the sluggish stream of the Oued Kseb, whose banks 

 were fringed with Vitex Agnus castus, and with Cyperacem 

 not yet in flower. We took this at the time for one of 

 the branches of a river shown on the French map as falling 

 into the Atlantic north of the Djebel Hadid, some twenty 

 miles from Mogador ; but we afterwards came to the con- 

 clusion that no such river is in existence. 



At or near the ford is the boundary of the province 



• It may be hoped that the plant will now baeome well known to 

 botanists, as our friend M. Cosson has obtained a good supply of seed, 

 which he has liberally distributed among many of the chief botanic 

 gardens of Europe. See Appendix D. 



