MALEVOLENT VEGETATION 175 



extracted fibre varies much in value ; probably the 

 best is obtained from the S. kirkii, or the S. 

 longiflora. Another variety which I have seen is 

 probably the S. sulcata, but the specimens I ex- 

 amined had not arrived at anything like maturity. 



At every turn you get examples of the wide 

 order of the Compositse, stretching away upward 

 from that common weed the Adenostemma, with 

 its small bundles of pale mauve blooms, a common 

 and unpleasantly prickly sow-thistle (Sonchus), 

 many showy annuals, a horrible pest the Bidens 

 pilosa, whose setae adhere to your clothes and 

 provoke language in no way connected with bo- 

 tanical research, and finally an endless array of 

 rambling bushes and shrubs, some bearing small 

 yellow flowers, which last but a short time ; and 

 as their brief period of existence corresponds with 

 the hottest time of the year, they escape, for the 

 most part, the attention of mankind, in common 

 with a thousand other beauties and graces of that 

 uncomfortable season of the African year. 



Having now, all too briefly and inadequately, 

 sketched the attractive and beneficent among 

 Nature's works in the world of trees and flowers, let 

 us spend a moment in contemplating from a safe 

 distance what I can only regard as the malevolent 

 vegetation of the Zambezi — that wide class of 

 noxious weed and spiteful thorn tree which, in the 

 invariable nature of things, easily outlives the more 

 graceful and desirable, in obedience to that ill- 

 devised law which ordains universally that immor- 

 tality, or such immortality as the vegetable world 

 can attain to, shall be expressly reserved for such 



