FORESTRY OF WEST AFRICA. 



being of quite small dimensions ; and the foreign 

 element is next to nothing, and undeveloped. 



Of the Flora of St. Helena an account will be found 

 in Melliss's Book on that island ; but its Botany, as 

 well as that of Ascension, is fully given in the Botany 

 of the ' Challenger Expedition,' 1873-6, which was 

 prepared by Mr. W. B. Hemsley, A.L.S., from which 

 it will be observed in the following extract that in 

 the Island of Ascension, the area of which is about 

 34 square miles, there is no native arboreous vegeta- 

 tion, Hedyotis adscensonis and Euphorbia origanoides 

 being the only endemics. 



"Ascension. — Whether this island ever supported 

 anything more than its present extremely meagre 

 flora is problematical : but the presence of two dis- 

 tinct endemic species of flowering plants, belonging 

 to widely diffused genera, is no help to the solution 

 of the problem. The one, Hedyotis adscejisonis, is not 

 very different from African and Asiatic species ; and 

 the other, Euphorbia origanoides, belongs to a group 

 of littoral, mostly shrubby species, widely spread in 

 Polynesia, with one species in the West Indies and the 

 Bermudas, and two on the Western Coast of Tropical 

 Africa. Two St. Helena endemic plants are recorded 

 from Ascension ; but there are no specimens in the 

 London Herbaria corroborating this, and it is almost 

 certain that there was some mistake." — Vol. I. Botany, 

 ' Challenger Expedition,' Report III., p. 65. 



" St. Helena was discovered by a Portuguese, Jean 



