14 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



accidentally smaller growth of A. umbellatus. In this I must venture 

 to disagree with him. 



Seme beautiful species of Disa grow in Kaffraria. I sent back 

 some fine plants of D crassicornis, which grows in the Umtata district, 

 but I fear that the bulbs have disappeared. It grows about one and 

 a half foot high, and has very large flowers, white shaded with lilac. 

 We found one plant only of D. pulchra in the East Griqualand 

 mountains on the Natal border. It is of a bright pink and one of 

 the most beautiful of the genus. 



The Eulophias are among the most interesting of the orchid tribe. 

 I sent back a number of them, but cannot as yet tell if they will come 

 to any good. 



Several kinds of Crinum, Brunsvigia, Cyrtanthus, Drimia, and 

 other bulbous plants seem to be doing well. Drimia macrantha 

 is more curious than beautiful, growing three to four feet high, with 

 leaves coming up after the flowering is over, and with flowers usually 

 brown and yellow, turning back like a Martagon. It only opens — that 

 is, turns back — at night, and I had therefore to draw it by gaslight. 

 It has a very strong, sweet scent at night only. 



Most of the flowers I have mentioned grow in South-East Africa, 

 but there are many of great interest and beauty also in British East 

 Africa and Uganda. The Mau Mountains, between Nairobi and Lake 

 Victoria Nyanza, rise to a height of some thousand feet, and are there- 

 fore cold enough for some of their indigenous plants to have a geed 

 chance here. 



The railway goes over a pass 8000 feet above the sea level, and 

 whenever the train stopped, either on purpose or by accident, I and my 

 kind fellow-passengers jumped out, and we collected a geed ni mber 

 of treasures. To a breakdown of the engine I owe Delphinium 

 macrocentron, whose lovely upright spikes of steely blue were grcv ing 

 among the long grass in quite park-like surroundings. I have since 

 secured a quantity of good seed, and have a large crop coming up, 

 which will be for disposal in due course. 



As a rule the wild plants occur singly, not in masses. But near 

 Cape Town, especially, our huge white Arum grows in thousands 

 together in the marshes, particularly in the road to Simonstown. 

 It also grows in sheets in Robben Island, the lepers' place of isolation. 

 It grows thus, in quantities together, all over South Africa where there 

 is water, but I have never seen it in such large quantities as near 

 Cape Town. It grows singly, or a few together, according to the size 

 of the moist places it finds. 



Much the same may be said of our ' red-hot poker,' Kniphofia 

 aloides. I have seen this growing in the marshy bed of a stream at 

 Blythswood, in the Transkei, where, mixed with the tall scarlet marsh 

 or river Anlholiza, they formed a real street of red, extending for 

 hundreds of yards. But this is the only place where I have seen it in 

 masses, though I have seen it growing singly, or in single clumps, all 

 the way from near the Cape up to the boundary of British East Africa 



