PREFACE. vli 
either in the productive quality of the soil, or in its sterility. Where there 
is moisture the warmth of the climate promotes vegetation, without the pre- 
paration of an artificial soil by the aid of composts or manures ; hence, one 
crop of grain in the year may be procured from, the shallowest soil and even 
in sheer sand. But, unfortunately for the country, in the hottest months 
of the year, from the beginning of December to the end of March, and 
sometimes to the middle of April, there scarcely falls a single shower of 
rain. In these months, the verdure totally disappears ; and the whole sur- 
face of the country presents to the eye either large tracts of white sand 
dotted with shrivelled heaths and other shrubs, struggling as it were to 
maintain the living principle, or regions covered with that brown sickly hue 
in which an angry poet, v/ith more wit than justice, has dressed the surface 
of that part of our island to the northward of the Tweed : 
" Far as the eye could reach no tree was seen, 
" Earth clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green." 
To persons arriving from a long sea voyage;, and immediately meeting 
with most of the European, and some of the tropical, fruits, the Cape must, 
no doubt, appear a most delightful spot ; and such persons, making a short 
stay, and loaded with refreshments for the succeeding part of their voyage, 
are apt to extol and to exaggerate the pleasantness and the value of the 
country. Botanists, also, and florists, are so taken up with the beauty 
and vast variety of fliowering shrubs and bulbous rooted plants, that they 
are apt to overlook the sandy surface out of which they grow, entirely bare 
of any kind of grass, and destitute of that verdant turf which is so distin- 
guishing a feature of our happy island. Beautiful as the heaths of the 
Cape most unquestionably are, yet those who have been accustomed to 
look at them nurtured in the green-houses of England, where all or most 
of the numerous species, and variety of the species, are collected into one 
groupe, and arranged so as to convey the most striking effect, would be 
greatly disappointed if they expected to meet with them, in the same state 
