162 BOTANY or CONGO. 



QV American Nutmeg} now cultivated in the West India 

 colonies ; and the former undoubtedly, the latter probably, 

 introduced from Africa by the Negroes, were neither met 

 with on the banks of the Congo, nor have they been yet 

 traced to any part of the west coast. 



The relation which the vegetation of the Eastern shores 

 of equinoctial Africa has to that of the west coast, we have 

 at present no means of determining ; for the few plants, 

 chiefly from the neighbom-hood of Mozambique, included in 

 Loureiro's Flora Cochinchinensis, and a very small number 

 collected by Mr. Salt on the same part of the coast, do not 

 afford materials for comparison. 



The character of the collections of Abyssinian Plants 

 made by Mr. Salt in his two jom-neys, forming part of Sir 

 Joseph Banks's herbarium, and amounting to about 260 

 species, is somewhat extratropical, and has but little affinity 

 to that of the vegetation of the west coast of Africa. 



To the Flora of JEgypt, that of Congo has still less rela- 

 tion, either in the number or proportions of its natural 

 476] families ; the herbarium, however, includes several species 

 which also belong to Egypt, as Nymphsea Lotus, Cyperus 

 Papyrus and articulatus, Sphenoclea zeylanica, Glinus 

 lotoides, Ethulia conyzoides, and Grangea maderaspatana. 



observed in the late Mission to Cummazee, the capital of Ashantee ; and 

 among them a drawing of the fruit and leaf of a plant, there called dttueah or 

 Attuah, vhich is no doubt the Akee, whose native country is therefore now 

 ascertained, 



1 Monodora myristica, Bunal Annonac. p. 80. Deeand. Syst. Nat. Reg. 

 Veget. 1, p. 477. Anona myristica, Oart. Sem. 3, p. IQi, i. 125, p. 1. Lunan 

 Hort. Jamaic. 2, p. 10. This remarkable plant is very properly separated from 

 Anona, and considered as a distinct genus by M. Dunal in his monograph of 

 AnonaceEe. The character given of this new genus, however, is not altogether 

 satisfactory, M. de CandoUe's description, from which it is derived, having 

 probably been taken from specimens which he had it not in his power to 

 examine completely. Both these authors have added to this genus Annona 

 microcarpa of Jacquin {Fragm. Bot. p. 40, t. 44, /. 7), established by that 

 author from the fruit of my Cargillia Australis {Prodr. Flor. Nov. Soil. 1, 

 p. 527), which belongs to the very different family of Ebenaceae. 



Long, in his History of Jamaica {vol. 3, p. 735), has given the earliest 

 account of Monodora Myristica, under the name of the American Nutmeg, and 

 considers it to have been probably introduced from South America : according 

 to other accounts, it comes from the Mosquito shore : but there is more reason 

 to suppose that it has been brought by the Negroes from some part of the 

 ivest coast of Africa, 



