LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



lxxvii 



months of the year, and the thermometer descends not unfrequently 

 during the winter to below —30° Reaumur (—36° Fahrenheit). 



The remainder of Asia comprises the two empires of China and 

 J apan, which have been hitherto almost a sealed book to our natu- 

 ralists. Japan, the flora of which had been partially known by the 

 investigations and importations of Siebold, and is now proving a rich 

 field for our horticultural collectors, has been the subject of a re- 

 markable paper by Dr. Asa Gray, throwing a new light on the geo- 

 graphical relations of the floras of America and Asia ; and a com- 

 plete enumeration of all the species known to be indigenous to the 

 J apanese islands, by Mr. Black, originally appended to Hodgson's 

 ' Residence in Nagasaki,' has been inserted in a revised form in a 

 recent number of the Bonplandia. But of the Chinese flora we 

 still know nothing, except that of a few points on the coast or of 

 the neighbourhood of Pekin explored chiefly by Russian botanists. 



The vegetation of Africa has lately been exciting a great deal 

 of interest. When Harvey and Sonder's Flora Capensis, above 

 alluded to, and the French official Flore d'Algerie, now apparently 

 at a dead stop, shall have been completed, those two works, with 

 A. Richards's Flora of Abyssinia, Webb's great work on the Canary 

 Islands, and Lowe's Madeira Flora, of which the second part has 

 now appeared, will have given us a fair idea of the piincipal 

 extra-tropical or subtropical regions ; but from within the tropics 

 little has been done as yet towards publishing the very great addi- 

 tions now being made to its known vegetation. The collections of 

 the late Mr. Barter, and especially of our present active and enter- 

 prising botanical traveller, Mr. G. Mann, have thrown a new light 

 on the geographical relations of the Western Flora. Dr. Kirk has 

 remitted to us, from the Eastern side, many interesting novelties, 

 notwithstanding the loss of an important portion of his collections 

 in a whirlpool on the Zambesi ; and Dr. Welwitsch's arduous 

 travels in the Mossamede and Angola country would have been fully 

 rewarded even had their results been limited to the discovery of the 

 Welwitschia, that misshapen mass representing the tree vegetation 

 of those sandy coasts, of which specimens were recently laid before 

 you, and whose wonderful structure will, I hope, be explained by 

 Dr. Hooker in all its scientific bearings in the next part of our 

 Transactions. Of all these riches but little has yet been published. 

 Dr. Hooker has given us an interesting account of the vegetation of 

 Clarence Peak, to be followed, I hope, ere long, by a paper on the 

 still more remarkable collection just received from the Cameroon 

 Mountains. The first portion of the description of the plants collected 



LINN. PEOC. VOL. VI. Q 



