2o6 The British Association in South Africa. 
methods employed in the Stanford University of California, and 
emphasized the need of having, in a university, a staff sufficiently 
large to deal effectively with the various branches of a subject such 
as botany. Both he and Mr. Seward, while agreeing with the 
main contentions of the President, were inclined to lay more stress 
than the latter on the importance of lectures, especially in the case 
of advanced classes. Miss Lilian Clarke gave a most interesting 
account, illustrated by lantern slides, of the teaching of botany in 
the James Allen School for Girls at Dulwich. A specially designed 
laboratory, thoroughly well lighted, has been fitted up with 
tanks, etc., so that living plants of various kinds can be kept and 
studied at all seasons of the year. There is also a garden, in 
which beds are set apart for halophytes, desert plants, climbers, etc., 
each girl having charge of one of these plots. No definite lectures 
are given, but the girls make observations and conduct experiments 
themselves, both in the garden and in the laboratory. 
Thursday morning was devoted to papers by Professor Engler 
and Dr. Marloth on the Vegetation of Tropical Africa and South 
Africa respectively. 
Professor Engler first called attention to the similarity which 
exists between the plant formations of every large continental 
tropical country. He dealt successively with the following 
formations, and their subdivisions, which can be distinguished 
in the vegetation of tropical Africa. The halophilous littoral 
formations; the hydrophilous and hygrophilous formations, found 
particularly iu equatorial West Africa, and eastwards to the Bahr 
el Ghazal; the sub-xerophilous formations which occur in the 
plains as well as the mountains, and the true xerophilous formations 
of the dry East African steppes, the Sahara, etc. He then discussed 
the affinities of the flora as a whole, concluding that while the 
dominant floral element is a native tropical African one, there 
can be distinguished in addition elements derived from such floras 
as the Madagascan, Indian, South African, boreal, Mediterranean 
and even the tropical American. These foreign elements, however, 
are not distributed equally among the various formations. 
Dr. Marloth discussed the phyto-geographical sub-divisions of 
South Africa, dealing with his subject both from the ecological and 
systematic points of view. The botanical regions suggested by the 
author differ in some respects from those proposed by Dr. Bolus 
and other authorities. Both Dr. Marloth’s paper and that of 
Professor Engler were illustrated by a number of beautiful lantern 
slides. 
