oaks, quince trees, or myrtles, to break off the southeast winds of summer, which, from their strength and dryness, are found to be deleterious to vegetation; but the grain is raised on open grounds. The produce of this article on the peninsula is confined chiefly to barley, which, in this country, is preferred to oats for feeding horses. None of the common flat-eared barley has yet been introduced, but that hexangular kind only is known, which in some parts of England is called beer, and in others big. Corn is generally cultivated beyond the isthmus and along the western coast, within the great north and south chain of mountains. The remote districts beyond these furnish a supply of horses, sheep, and horned cattle.

The natural productions of the Cape Peninsula, in the vegetable kingdom, are perhaps more numerous, varied, and elegant, than on any other spot of equal extent in the whole world. Of these, by, the indefatigable labours of Mr. Masson, his Majesty's botanic garden at Kew exhibits a choice collection; but many are still wanting to complete it. Few countries can boast of so great a variety of the bulbous rooted plants as Southern Africa. In the month of September, at the close of the rainy season, the plains at the feet of the Table Mountain and on the west shore of Table Bay, called now the Green Point, exhibit a beautiful appearance. As in England the humble daisy, in the spring of the year, decorates the green sod, so at the Cape, in the same season, the whole surface is enlivened with the large Othonna, so like the daisy as to be distinguished only by a Botanist, springing up in myriads out of a verdant carpet, not however of grass, but composed generally of the low creeping Trifolium melilotos. The Oxalis cernua, and others of the same genu, varying through

every tint of colour from brilliant red, purple, violet, yellow, down to snowy whiteness, and the Hyporis stellata, or star flower, with its regular radiated corolla, some of golden yellow, some of a clear unsullied white, and others, containing in each flower white, violet, and deep green, are equally numerous, and infinitely more beautiful. Whilst these are involving the petals of their showy flowrets at the setting of the sun, the modest Ixia Cinnamomea, of which are two varieties, one called here the Cinnamon, and the other the evening, flower, that has remained closed up in its brown calyx and invisible during the day, now expands its small white blossoms, and scents the air, throughout the night, with its fragrant odours. The tribe of Ixias are numerous and extremely elegant; but none more singular than that species which bears a long upright spike of pale green flowers. The Iris, the Moraa, Antholiza, and Gladiolus, each furnish a great variety of species not less elegant nor graceful than the Ixia. The Gladiolus, which is here called Africaner, is uncommonly beautiful with its tall waving spike of striped flowers, and has also a fragrant smell.* That species of a deep crimson is still more elegant. Of those genera which botanists have distinguished by the name of the liliaceous class, many are exceedingly grand and beautiful, particularly the Amaryllis, of which there are several species. The sides of the hills are finely scented with the family of Geraniums; the different species of which, exhibiting such variety of foliage, once started an idea that this tribe of plants alone might. imitate in their leaves every genus of the vegetable world.

* A small yellow Iris furnishes a root for the table, in size and taste not unlike a chesnut. These small roots are called Uyntjis by the colonists, and that of the Aponegeton distachion, which is also eaten, water uyntjie,

The frutescent, or shrubby plants, that grow in wild luxuriance, some on the hills, others in the deep chasms of the mountains, and others on the sandy isthmus, furnish an endless variety for the labours of the botanist. Of the numbers of this class of naturalists, who have visited the Cape, none have returned to Europe without having added to his collection plants that were not described nor known. The eye of a stranger is immediately caught by the extensive plantations of the Protea Argentea, whose silver coloured leaves, of the soft texture of sattin, gives it a distinguished appearance among the deep foliage of the oak, and still deeper hue of the stone pine. It is singular enough that though the numerous species of Protea be indiscriminately produced on almost every hill of the colony, the silver tree should be confined to the feet of the Table Mountain alone, a circumstance that led to the supposition of its not being indigenous to the Cape: it has never yet, however, been discovered in any other part of the world. The tribe of heaths are uncommonly elegant and beautiful: they are met with equally numerous and flourishing on the stoney hills and sandy plains; yet, unless raised from seed, are with difficulty transplanted into gardens. Little inferior to the heaths are the several species of the genera to which botanists have given the names of Polygala, Brunia, Diosma, Borbonia, Cliffortia, and Asparagus; to which might be added a vast variety of others, to be enumerated only in a work professedly written on the subject.

The peninsula of the Cape affords but a narrow field for the inquiries of the Zoologist. The wooded kloofs or clefts in the mountains still give shelter to the few remaining troops of wolves and hyenas that not many years ago were very troublesome to

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the town. The latter, indeed, generally shuns the habitations of men; but the former, even yet, sometimes extends his nightly prowl to the very skirts of the town, enticed by the dead cattle and offals from slaughter-houses, that are shamefully suffered to be left or thrown even at the sides of the public roads. In the caverns of the Table Mountain, and indeed in almost every mountain of the colony, is found in considerable number a small dusky-coloured animal about the size of a rabbit, with short ears and no tail, called here the Das, and described in the Systema Naturæ of Linnæus under the name of Hyrax Capensis, and by Pennant under that of Cape Cavy. The flesh is used for the table, but is black, dry, and of an indifferent flavour. One species of Antelope, called here the Griesbok or grizzled deer, frequents the thickets of the hills, and does no small injury at nights to the infant shoots of the vine; and another species of the name of Düiker or Diver, from the manner of its plunging and concealing itself among the bushes, is not uncommonly met with on the sandy isthmus. Neither of these animals appear as yet to have been described in any systematic work, though very common in every part of the colony, and often mentioned by travellers. The colour of the Düiker is wholly of a dusky brown; is about three feet in length and two and a half in height: the male has horns straight, black, nearly parallel, but diverging a little towards the points, four inches long, and annulated close to the base. The female has no horns; length of the ears seven inches; of the tail, five inches. The sinus lachrymalis, or subocular indent, which most of the antelopes have, is in this species so conspicuous, that the Dutch say it carries the gall-bladder under the eye. The Greisbok is of a grizzled or greyish colour, the ground bright brown, interspers

ed with silver hairs; length two feet nine inches; height one foot nine inches; ears five inches, black, and naked; tail two inches; the sinus lachrymalis very distinct. The male has horns four inches long, straight, smooth, tapering to a point, black: the female has no horns. The Steenbok, once the most numerous of the antelope tribe that inhabited the peninsula, is now nearly extirpated from this part of Africa, though equally abundant with the other two beyond the isthmus. This animal is the Antelope Grimmea of Pallas, and the Guinea antelope of Pennant.. The horses of the Cape are not indigenous, but were first introduced from Java, and since that, at various times, from different parts of the world. The grizzled and the black spaniard, first brought hither, about twenty years ago, from South America, where the breed now runs wild over that extensive country, are the horses that are most esteemed for their beauty, their gentleness, and service. Though small, and often very ill-fed, they are capable of sustaining a great degree of hard labour. Heavy waggons, however, are chiefly drawn by oxen. These are all indigenous, except the breed from a few European cattle that have lately been introduced. The Cape ox is distinguished by its long legs, high shoulders, and large horns.

The larger kinds of birds that hover round the summit of the Table Mountain, are vultures, eagles, kites, and crows, that assist the wolves in cleansing the country near the town of a nuisance that is tacitly permitted by the police. Ducks, teals, and snipes are met with in the winter season about the pools and periodical lakes on the isthmus. Turtle doves, a thrush called the Sprew, and the Fiscal bird, the Lanius Collaris, frequent the gardens near the town.