Notes on Plants at Roraima. 147 
after such brief and cursory exploration, yielded greater 
results, perhaps hardly has any such district yielded equally 
great botanical results as has Roraima; and still more 
probable is it that few such small districts are so dis- 
tinctly marked off from the country immediately sur- 
rounding them by such great and remarkable peculiarity 
in their vegetation. In brief, the district of Roraima is, 
from a botanical point of view, chiefly interesting as an 
oasis clothed with a vegetation which is both in most 
marked degree distinct from that of the country which 
immediately surrounds it, and is at the same time, also 
in very marked degree, peculiar either to this special 
district or to this in common with a few other almost 
equally isolated, but widely separated, districts. 
I cannot, therefore, it seems to me, devote these pre- 
fatory remarks, in which I have the privilege of intro- 
ducing the list and description of my collection so 
kindly prepared by the authorities above mentioned, to 
a better purpose than to as emphatic a statement as I 
can make of the isolated characler, botanically, of the 
Roraima districl, of its probable relation, botanically, 
to certain other probably similar districls, and of the 
general appearance of the very peculiar and distincl 
vegetation of these districls.* 
The whole district known under the name of Guiana 
may be likened to a wedge driven into the north eastern 
shoulder of South America. Politically, it is thus 
placed between Brazil on the south and Venezuela on 
* I use the phrase ' Roraima district' as including not only the moun- 
tain of that name but the whole of the small group of similar sandstone 
mountains of which Roraima is the best known, and at present the only 
explored member, 
T 2 
