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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTTTRAL SOCITETV. 



in succession the different countries, particularly the coastal ones. 

 The translation of Schimper's Plant-Geography has already made 

 available to the English reader the general features of the more acces- 

 sible parts of Africa ; the present work is, however, much more de- 

 tailed, hence on the whole adapted rather to the specialist than to the 

 general reader. 



The main features of the vegetation of Spain and other countries on 

 the European side of the Mediterranean are found again in North 

 Africa, better developed, however, because cultivation and settlement 

 of the land have not proceeded so far. From Morocco and the culti- 

 vated " Tell" lands of Algeria, the reader is taken over the *' alfa- 

 grass" of the inland plateau to the slopes and summits of the Atlas 

 Mountains, and into the Sahara, which is by no means so monotonous 

 in its vegetation as is generally supposed. Eastwards, the better-known 

 lands of Egypt and the Nile, Abyssinia, and Somaliland are dealt with. 

 From the Galla Highlands and the Massai Highlands, British East 

 Africa is reached, and although this receives a shorter notice than 

 might be desired, the deficiency can be made up from works of British 

 explorers. German East Africa receives more attention (120 pp.), 

 and the provision of a coloured vegetation map enables the reader to 

 follow the somewhat intricate zonation from the sea-coast to the higher 

 mountains. The coast is mainly a white strand with xerophytic 

 plants, backed by a green bush-scrub broken by plantations of cocoanut 

 and mango. The creeks and estuaries with oozy mud are distinguished 

 by the mangrove swamp. The coastal bush-forest is rich and ever- 

 green, a reflex of the heavy tropical rainfall during the long rainy 

 season of the south-west monsoon and the lesser rains in October 

 and November. Behind this coastal screen of forest the rainy season 

 becomes shorter, and the great steppes and scrubs of the interior begin. 

 The rich fauna is probably more familiar than the somewhat meagre 

 flora, but Dr. Engler has prepared the way for that economic develop- 

 ment of East Africa which is to come, by a classification of the various 

 forms of steppe met with. The more arid are salt-steppes, and those 

 with fleshy, thorny succulents; less dry are the thom-bush steppes / 

 consisting either of evergreen or deciduous scrub. Other forms of \ 

 steppe are " park-like " with trees standing isolated over a poor j 

 ground-vegetation on the drier soils, or over a grassy sward in moister 

 conditions. The tropical rain-forest, which in West Africa begins 

 near the coast and follows rivers like the Congo far inland, is in East ' 

 Africa limited to the tropical valleys of the larger miountain regions ; 

 such as Usambara and Kilimanjaro. On the mountains the chief zones \ 

 are bush-scrub or grass-land above the rain-forest, then a " cloud- | 

 forest " which follows the occurrence at higher altitudes of a zone of | 

 low night-temperatures with much cloud. The summit zones are j 

 alpine in character, with giant Senecio and Lobelia in the lower sub- 

 alpine. 



The next groups of countries dealt with are those round Tanganyika 

 and Nyassa, and eastwards to the coast, then Ehodesia and South 



