THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 21 



hills, and a plant with beautiful purple convolvulaceous 

 flowers, which trailed over the sand at the edge of the beach 

 for yards. I had hoped to have sent home a fair representa- 

 tion of the flora of this island ; but my expectations unfortu- 

 nately came to naught, as the greater number of my specimens 

 were subsequently destroyed in the course of our hot damp 

 voyage through the tropics. This is the less to be regretted, as 

 the Eev. Mr. Lowe has carefully worked out the botany of the 

 entire group. In his lecture on Insular Floras, delivered before 

 the British Association in 1866, Dr. Hooker remarks that, on 

 his visit to the Cape de Verdes in 1839, he found that the plants 

 of the lowlands were purely African and Arabo-Saharan in 

 character, but that on the mountains a few occurred which 

 were very characteristic of the Canaries and Madeira. He 

 also mentions some of the results obtained by the recent in- 

 vestigations of Mr. Lowe, viz. that " the mass of the flora is 

 African, and that the mountains contain many Canarian 

 types ; but that all these are the types that have representa- 

 tives in the Mediterranean region ; whilst of these peculiar 

 Canarian, Madeira, and Azorean plants, that have no near 

 allies or representatives in Europe, not one is found in the 

 Cape de Verdes, with the single exception of the Dragon's- 

 blood tree. Also, ascending above the tropical zone to 3000 

 feet and upwards, many of the same middle-European plants 

 are found, that appear at correspondingly lower elevations 

 in Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores." 



On reaching the sandy bay which I have mentioned, we 

 dismounted, and rested for a while close to the beach, on 

 which 1 observed several large broken shells of a species of 

 Sepia, lying. Here my horse took advantage of a momentary 

 fit of absence of mind on my part to munch off the heads of 

 a bunch of plants which I held in my hand before placing 



