FAUNA AND FLORA OF SINAI, PETRA, AND WADY 'ARABAH. 3 



Bernard Heilpern) Professor Hull brought our travels to a safe con- 

 clusion. In a volume recently published by the Society, he has given 

 the public an account of our experiences, and to it, and its Appendix by 

 Major Kitchener, the reader may turn for fuller geological, geographical, 

 and other information relative to our explorations. To the other members 

 of our party, for their assiduity in obtaining specimens for me, I shall feel 

 for ever grateful. 



In these pages, which owe their appearance to the liberality of the 

 same Society, I propose in the first place to give a running account of the 

 collections made in the order in which they were gathered, with such 

 extracts from my journal as may serve to illustrate them. Afterwards I 

 will enumerate in detail the various species which I have identified, 

 and conclude with an endeavour to give a full account and analysis 

 of the Flora of Sinai, or rather of the Sinaitic peninsula of Arabia 

 Petrsea. 



By the kind permission of the Royal Irish Academy, the systematic 

 list of plants is reproduced here from their Transactions. The specimens 

 themselves are in the Herbaria of Kew and the British Museum. 



CHAPTER II. 



'AYUN MUSA TO wAdY LEBWEH. 



Having left Suez on Saturday, November 10, 1883, we took up our 

 quarters till Monday at 'Ay<in Mtasa, the usual starting-place for Sinai. 

 A description of the gardens here, with the introduced plants found about 

 them, has been given by Mons. Barbey, in his recent volume ' Herborisa- 

 tions au Levant,' who visited them at a more auspicious season. His 

 tour did not elsewhere cover the ground we visited till reaching Bir es 

 Seb^. 



At 'Ayun Musa my hopes fell to a low ebb. With the exception of a 

 couple of showy flowering shrubs {Lantana camera, Linn , and Cassia 

 bicapsularis, Linn.) in the gardens of date palm, bounded by prickly pear, 

 there appeared to be hardly a vestige of unwithered vegetable life. Closer 

 inspection, however, yielded dead flowers and ripe seed capsules of several 



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