BOTANY. 
223 
by bis sister, and amongst them I found bis invaluable St. Helena 
Herbarium in a capital state of preservation. 
“It includes 169 flowering plants, but most unhappily Dr. 
Burchell .has not indicated which are bond fide natives, and which 
have followed the track of man and animals introduced by him, and 
have thus become quasi-indigenous or naturalized. Some years 
after Dr. Burchell’ s visit, however, an eminent Indian botanist. Dr. 
Boxburgli, visited St. Helena, and drew up a catalogue ot the indi- 
genous, naturalized, and cultivated plants then existing, carefully 
indicating the truly indigenous ones that were then surviving. Dr. 
Roxburgh’s collection was much less complete than Burchell s, but 
by collating the two, and with my own observations made during 
two visits to the Island, I have arrived at a fairly accurate estimate 
of the number and affinities of the native vegetation remaining. 
“According to these data, about forty-five indigenous species 
inhabited the Island before Major-General Beatson destroyed the 
goats, and introduced the European, &c., plants ; to which five 
dubious natives may possibly be added. All are shrubs, trees, or 
perennial plants ; not one is an annual (though introduced annual 
plants abound, both tropical and temperate). Forty ot them are 
absolutely confined to the Island, and five are tropical weeds, or sea- 
side plants of very wide distribution. These forty are absolutely 
peculiar to St. Helena, and, with scarcely an exception, cannot be 
regarded as very close specific allies of any other plants at all. Ho 
less than seventeen of them have been referred to peculiar genera, 
and of the others, all differ so markedly as species from theii con- 
geners, that not one comes under the category of being, an insular 
form of a continental species. Many of them are excessively scarce, 
being now found in very small numbers, and on single rocks ; not a 
few have never been gathered since Dr. Burchell s visit; some are 
certainly now extinct, as the beautiful Ebony tree, and probably 
nearly one-fifth have totally disappeared during the last half century, 
or are now all but extinct. 
“ From such fragmentary data it is difficult to form any exact 
conclusions as to the affinities of this Flora, but I think it may be 
safely regarded as an African one, and characteristic of Southern 
extra-tropical Africa. The genera Phylica, Pelargonium, Mesem- 
bryanthemum, Osteospermum, and Wahlenbergia, are eminently 
characteristic of Southern extra-tropical Africa, and I find amongst 
