> 
146 TlMEHRI. 
mens. As regards the number of new forms collected, 
generic and specific, this, great as it is, would undoubt- 
edly have been much greater but for the fa6~t, unfortunate 
in this respe6l but fortunate in others, that my collection 
was made at exaftly the same period of the year 
[November and December] at which such collecting as 
had been done before about Roraima, by Sir ROBERT 
and Dr. SCHOMBURGK and by KARL Appun, had been 
accomplished.* 
Probably, never has a district of equally small size, 
* The list of visitors to Roraima other than Redmen is as follows. 
Sir Robert Schomburgk, then at the head of a boundary commission, 
was there in 1838 and again, with his brother Dr. Richard Schomburgk, 
the present curator of the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, in 1842. Both 
made considerable botanical collections, which were distributed, I 
believe, mainly between the Herbaria at Kew, the British Museum 
and at Berlin. Karl Appun was at Roraima in 1864 ; his collections 
are chiefly at Kew. C. B. Brown, then the geological surveyor of 
British Guiana, was there in 1869 ; two Englishmen Flint and 
Eddington were there in 1877; and two others McTurk and Boddam- 
Wetham were there in 1878. None of these five last made botanical 
collections. David Burke, an English orchid collector, was there in 
1881, and brought home certain interesting living plants, among others 
the South American pitcher-plant {Heliamphora nutans), which has, 
I believe, since been distributed by Messrs. Veitch & Sons. Henry 
Whiteley, an English collector of birdskins, was there on several 
occasions between 1879 and 1884, and, I believe, was again there in 
1885, but has collected no plants. Seidei., a German orchid collector, 
was there in April 1884 and again, with us, in December of the same 
year. He brought back only living plants, especially the magnificent 
Cattleya Laurenceana, which has since been distributed by Mr. A. 
Sander. Of these, Seidel, the only traveller with an eye for plants who 
has been at Roraima except in the last months of the year, assures me 
that the abundance of flowers was much greater there in April than 
in December. But in the latter months the Indians' cassava fields arc 
in full bearing and provision is therefore much more easily attainable. 
