52 
Karoo plants.—Visitors to No. VII. House at Kew, which is 
mainly devoted to South African species, will have noticed a 
collection of plants of the most singular aspect. Nature seems 
to have aimed, and with entire success, at obtaining the maximum 
of bulk with the minimum of surface from which water could be 
the Zwarteberg w ebted for them e unceasing 
ae ar of its old in Professor uc iy d as PS 
rnment Botanist of Cape Colony. he following 
iterating letter relates to some recent Eve el i of peculiar 
interest :— 
PROFESSOR MACOWAN to ROYAL GARDENS, KEW. 
Matjesfontein, 
My DEAR FRIEND, October 5, 1898. 
BY way of rustication, I aa myself for a few a here in 
the Karoo, a dry and thirsty land where no water is, unless you 
pump it up from the boasi of the earth. There has, therefore, 
been opportunity to find for you the Crassula p whined alas for 
which =~ were sighing in a not very ancient letter. Being taken 
in a very dry time, and after the flowering se 'ason, there is all 
the better chance of the specimens sent reaching you in condition. 
I have found in practice at the Botanic Garden that every plant 
which we succeeded in flowering invariably died off after that 
piece of pbysiologie work. Hence it will be well to give your 
trouble to the smaller specimens, and not to bother about the few 
sent with the dry flower-heads still adhering to the stem apex. 
With these are a good many of the common and uncommon 
objects of the Karoo: two species of Pelargonium of the humpty- 
dumpty sort, and another, not previously seen by me, with a string 
of succulent stem-joints, large white ne and pale creamy 
yellowish-white flowers—a pretty little thing. 
Euphorbia Hystrix i is here—a very comical plant. When the 
tufts are elliptical in shape it looks exactly like a great green 
hedge-hog, more like that evil beast than like the legitimate 
rad “ iron-pig," or les cii after which = a ge ret 
name. There seems to be underground e 
caudex, from which, by copious branching, all "eripi. "Model 
huddled ramuli take their rise. The plant -I gathered among 
the rocks above Wapperthal for E. Hystrix differed from this, 
in that the caudex was distinctly above ground. Perhaps it may be 
another species, but if it were buried three-quarters under ground 
it would present exactly the above hedge-hog aspect. I have 
some 25 ramuli of the Matjesfontein one, ready for exsiccation 
when I return to town. The Arthrothamnus section of Euphorbia 
should be cultivated so as to have them properly described, when ? 
when you get to them. They cannot be described from exsiccata. 
Moreover, the Ecklon and Zeyher exsiccata of Euphorbia that I 
have are tuo bad for words. send one common species, which 
I got out, in such condition that I think it may survive the travel 
home. Some others, great fles on fellows, are far too big for 
sending in this little parcel way. The worst of it is, they alter 
incredibly in aspect when cultivated in the duro atmosphere 
