SOUTHERN AFRICA. 33 
is generally cultivated beyond the isthmus and along the 
western coast, within the great north and south chain of 
mountains. The remote districts beyond these furnish a sup- 
ply of horses, sheep, and horned cattle. 
The natural productions of tlie Cape Peninsula, in the vege- 
table kingdom, are perhaps more numerous, varied, and ele- 
gant, than on an}'^ other spot of equal extent in the whole 
world. Of these, by the indefatigable labors of Mr. Masson, 
his Majesty's botanic garden at Kew exhibits a choice col- 
lection ; but many arc still wanting to complete it. Few- 
countries can boast of so great a variety of the bulbous rooted 
plants as Southern Africa. In the month of September, at 
the close of the rainy season, the plains at the feet of the 
Table Mountain and on the Avest shore of Table Bay, called 
now the Qreen Point, exhibit a beautiful appearance. As in 
England the humble daisy, in the spring of the year, deco- 
rates the green sod, so at tlie Cape, in the same season, the 
%vhole surface is enlivened with the large Ofhomia, so like the 
daisy as to be distinguished only by a Botanist, springing up 
in myriads out of a verdant carpet, not however of grass, but 
composed generally of the ]ow creeping Trifoliiim ineUlotos. 
The Oialis c€r?ma, and others of the same genus, varying 
through every tint of color from brilliant red, purple, violet, 
yellow, down to snowy whiteness, and the Ilypoxis stellata or 
star flower with its regular radiated corolla, some of golden 
yellow, some of a clear unsullied whiter and others contain- 
ing in each flower, white, violet, and deep green, arc equally 
numerous, and infinitely more beautiful. AVhilst these are in- 
volving the petals of their slic wy flowrets at the setting of the 
VOL. II. F 
