44 
CAPE FLOWERS AT HOME. 
HEM I saw the announcement of an article on Cape 
Flowers in the November number by Mrs. Wilfred 
Durrant, I turned to it with a thrill of expectant 
delight, but a shudder went through me when I found 
that the first words of the article were: “ The shelves of our green- 
houses and conservatories.” Mrs. Durrant undoubtedly made 
her subject very interesting, but it reminded me of Mrs. Green’s 
paper in the Nineteenth Century on the poor Boers imprisoned in 
St. Helena. I do not want to say a word against gardeners or 
gardening, nor do I grudge our floral beauties being made 
accessible in the only possible manner to the colder countries. 
Indeed, I enjoy our own hot-houses of tropical plants very much ; 
but reading about my poor floral friends languishing or flourish- 
ing in a state of captivity made me desire to say something of 
them, whether in their own luxurious abode or in their courageous 
struggle for life under adverse circumstances. 
Mrs. Durrant naturally, finding these flowers all together in 
the same green-houses, speaks of them all as if “ they grew in 
beauty side by side.” Perhaps there is no flora in the world 
which is more dainty in its localism than that of South Africa. 
The Cape Peninsula, for example, has a flora much more distinct 
from that of the Karroo, less than ioo miles away, than the 
vegetation of England is from that of Russia. Some heaths are 
found inhabiting a few hundred square yards and may be sought 
for in vain anywhere else. The silver-tree grows profusely on 
the slopes of Table Mountain, but obstinately refuses to travel, 
and indeed even in its own habitat it is difficult to grow it in 
captivity. You may stand on a dry, exposed mountain-slope, 
and will find that every one of the hundred species around you 
has its own peculiar way of adapting itself to its hard conditions. 
Most of them narrow their leaves ; many of them cover their 
leaves with silky hairs ; some of them surround their leaves with 
a protective margin of red, and by a perpendicular twist turn up 
this margin to the pitiless sun. From there you walk a hundred 
yards and down into a ravine whose channel is fretted with a 
perpetual stream ; at once the plants around you are as entirely 
different as if you had stepped from a garden to a green-house. 
One of the most interesting examples of this localism I found 
near a place called Piquetberg, where the last geological remnant 
of what was once a mountain of Table Mountain sandstone is 
resting on a wide plain of the older clay-slate. This little stack 
of rocks pathetically shows its relationship to its gigantic cousins 
visible on the horizon by cherishing in its nooks and crevices 
a whole set of plants which you will find over there, but for 
which you will search the surrounding plain to no purpose. 
Some of Mrs. Durrant’s statements want a certain amount of 
correction which I hope she will not think unkind. For example, 
