Many of the animals mentioned are now becoming scarce, or to be seen only far in the interior. The elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus are rapidly disappearing through the persecution of the hunter. On the high open table-lands of the interior immense multitudes of quadrupeds congregate especially; and the proteaceæ, equally distinctive of this flora, abound most in the western districts of the colony, and are especially numerous on the sandy plains. One of the most beautiful of orchids, the famous Disa grandiflora, is a plant of Table Mountain. Among remarkable plants may be mentioned, the waxberry, Myrsia cordifolia, a shrub, the berries of which are thickly coated with wax; and the well-known monstrous-looking Testudinaria elephantipes. The much-cultivated and familiar great White Arum, Calla Æthiopica, is common in wet places.

It is worthy of note, that whilst the animals, both quadrupeds and birds, of South Africa have many relations with those of Western Africa within the tropics, the plants belong to completely a different series, and are connected with the flora of the rest of Africa only by eastern relations. In some features of the flora there is a curious analogy manifested with the Australian types.

The coasts of the Cape have a marine population as peculiar and striking in their way as the terrestrial, and constitute a well-marked sea-province, the eastern limits of which are to the south of Natal, where the great Indo-Pacific region meets that of the Cape. Among shell-fish, the limpet tribe has its chief congregation of species here.

WESTERN OR NEW WORLD.
ANTARCTIC AMERICA.

We enter the New World by the cold regions of the extreme south—the home of penguins. Here we find forms of animal and vegetable life representative of those that inhabit the Arctic regions and their borders. The most southerly arborescent vegetation is seen in Hermit Island near Cape Horn, where stunted forests of antarctic and evergreen beeches grow. The same phenomenon is exhibited of multiplication of individuals and paucity of species to which attention will be called in the notice of the extreme north. The southernmost of all flowering plants is a grass, the Aira antarctica, a native of the South Shetland islands.

SOUTHERNMOST REGIONS.

By the Chilian auraucarias, the fuchsias, calceolarias, and petunias, some of the peculiar features of the vegetation of the southernmost regions of South America are indicated. Many of our most beautiful and familiar garden plants come from these provinces. In the high regions of the Andes of Chili, as well as further towards the equator, lives the chinchilla, famous for its fur, at an elevation of between 12,000 and 14,000 feet—guinea-pigs are found of peculiar kinds, and the llama, which ranges to a height of 1800 feet.

TROPICAL SOUTH AMERICA.

The rich regions of Brazil and Tropical America are typified by some of their most characteristic vegetable forms, and by not a few of the most striking members of their mammalian fauna, as well as birds of exquisite hues and strange shapes. Among the latter, the toucans and humming birds are singularly striking. This is the great central home of the New World monkeys, contrasting with and representative of those of the Old World, but constituting an entirely distinct group. Their nostrils placed far apart and flattened, the number of their teeth, and the prehensile tail,—a fifth hand,—with which so many of them are endowed, give them an aspect very different from their relatives over the Atlantic. In the vast forests of Brazil they revel among the palms, Barringtonias and monkey pots, whilst, on the ground below, the giant ant-eater, and many another creature equally strange, prowls around the shade. The jaguar, puma, and ocelot, which take the place of the great cats of the Old World, the agouti and capabara, the sloth and coati-mundi, all present themselves in this compartment. The American tapir is here, and in the more western portions of the ground, are placed crochet-deer, and the Rhea americana, the ostrich of the west. The llama marks the region of the Andes, and in the New World represents the camel of the Old.