981 
of judicious Medion and admirable preservation, are without 
rival. His carefully accurate notes upon the fresh plants have 
also been at our service. Without the access to Dr. Welwitsch's 
Herbarium this region would have been comparatively a blank 
in the present work.’ 
“ Dr. Welwitsch died in 1872, wem bequeathed his à — 
to the British Museum. This led t o prolonged litigation on the 
part of the Portuguese over utiint ending in a UM omise. 
But the collections were no longer available for study at Kew, 
and rien Oliver eventually abandoned the further prosecution 
of the work. He retired from his official post in 1890. 
«e Mean while the publication of the first three volumes had 
` considerably stimulated Mieres research in Africa. Sir John 
irk had become Consul-General at Zanzibar, and lost no 
. Commissioner in British Central Africa, imitated his example 
in British Central Africa. Much valuable work in Equatorial 
Africa was also done by the missionaries of the Church Missionary 
ue The Temperate flora discovered on Kilimanj aro by the 
ev. C. New, who was probably the first human being to reach 
its snow-line, and the collections subsequently made by Mr. Joseph 
Thomson on the mountains of East Equatorial Africa confirmed 
the relationships of the high-level floras of Tropical Africa with 
those of the northern hemisphere on the one hand and of the 
Cape on the old. which were first indicated by Mr. Mann's 
collections on the Cameroons. Fede occ ek e raise theoretical 
questions of the highest intere The us Delimitation 
Commissions which followed the Parson of "ihe continent each 
yielded botanical results of more or less value. And the addition 
of new territories to the Colonies on the West Coast stimulated 
the desire of ied Governments for an investigation of their 
vegetable produc 
r ise result was pou n immense mass of material poured into 
, though individual core uns were worked out in a 
xod of scattered papers, a general demand sprang up in rss 
countries, y^ well as at home, for a comprehensive work w 
would sum up the knowledge which had been acquired, wit ü no 
little éfpétidittte of labour and even of life, of the vegetation of 
Tropical Africa. 
* The desire eventually found expression in the following 
letter :— 
* * FOREIGN OFFICE to ROYAL GARDENS, KEW 
* * Foreign Office, March Slat, 1891. 
eee SIR, 
“cI AM directed by the Marquis of Salisbury to state to you 
that his attention has been called to the fact that three volumes 
only of the ** Flora of Tropical Africa” have as yet been pene 
and that the want of a complete handbook describing know 
pup Lap pene their study by Her Majesty's officers in ve 
di of Africa which are now being opened up to 
civilisation 
“IA knowledge of African botany is of great practical value, as 
was proved by the discovery of Sir John Kirk, whilst ia pei 
