BOTANY 
2 I I 
•citing of Latin names; but I wish to substantiate my statements regarding 
the beauty of the flora by enabling the reader to identify the objects of my 
admiration. He should derive from this list the just impression that throughout 
at least six months in the year even the low-lying plains of Central Africa are 
bright in colour with flowers and fruits ; but 
if this is the case with the lowlands what 
adjectives can be employed to adequately 
picture the flora of the highlands ? One 
sweeping statement must be made that during 
spring - time they are gorgeous with their 
flower displays—gorgeous with lakes of azure- 
blue and mauve, stretches of pinkish-white, 
mounds of rose-tint, columns of purple, sheets 
of ultramarine, circles of orange, constellations 
of pure white, stains of blood-red, billows of 
yellow. Anything more beautiful 
than these wild flower gardens in 
the country which lies between 1000 
and 4000 feet in altitude I have 
never seen. And as I have already 
remarked, although in its full efful¬ 
gence during the spring months 
(October, November, December) and 
in the autumn revival (April, May, 
June), yet the flower display in the 
uplands maintains itself throughout 
the whole year. Why should I 
weary the reader further by Homeric 
lists of scientific names ? All these 
can be found in the Appendix ; and 
a red uly those inclined to doubt or minimise 
•GROWING IN ALL THE STREAM VALLEYS IN THE SHIRE HIGHLANDS UIV Statements may look Up tile 
various genera and species in the 
Gardens and at the Herbarium at Kew, and (taking for granted the truth 
of my statements that the flowering plants frequently grow in masses which 
contribute great effects of unbroken colour) may even without a visit to British 
Central Africa become once for all convinced that whatever may be the case 
with the gloomy forests of the Amazon or Malay xWchipelago, the open, 
reasonably-rained-on parts of Tropical Africa are as splendidly endowed with 
flower shows as with singing birds. Up in the high mountains this is still more 
marked. Here an emotional person would faint away before the rocks hung 
with blue lobelias, and the clumps of smalt and cobalt Disa Orchids. 1 
There is a tree lily (Vellozia splendens ) which in the spring-time bears from 
its gouty stems (ordinarily finished by a tuft of grass-like leaves) sprays of 
creamy-white blooms, so beautiful that even the botanists of Kew were touched, 
and called it “ splendens.” 2 
1 Perhaps the loveliest ground orchid in the world —Disa hamatopetala. This is well figured from 
•our specimens in the Transactions of the Linncean Society for May, 1894. 
- Botany should be dealt with by a class of sylphs ; instead of which its priests are often old and 
unenthusiastic men. Plod through page after page of botanical description, and where do you find any 
hint as a rule of the matchless beauty they should be describing? Little if any mention is made of the 
colour of the “ corolla ” (as it is correct to call the showy part of the flower), but what the botanist likes to 
note .with so much satisfaction is that the plant is either glabrous or scabrous, that it is possibly caulescent 
