Note 11 — Chapter I

‘A knowledge of the temperate flora of any spot on the West Coast of tropical Africa has long been one of the greatest desiderata in botanical geography, not only on account of the intrinsic interest that must attach to the plants of the extremely few isolated points so elevated as to possess a temperate climate in that vast humid and torrid area, but also from the light such lights might be exacted to throw on the floras of St. Helena, the Cape de Verd, and the Canaries, all of which (and especially the former) contain peculiar endemic genera, whose nearest allies might be expected to exist in the mountains of the neighbouring continent.’—‘Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society,’ vol. vi.