Page:Miscellaneousbot01brow.djvu/180

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162 BOTANY OF CONGO.

OX Americcm Nidme(j} now cultivated in the West India colonies ; and the former undoubtedly, the latter probably, introduced from Africa by the Negroes, were neither met with on the banks of the Congo, nor have they been yet traced to any part of the west coast.

The relation which the vegetation of the Eastern shores of equi7iocf'ial Africa has to that of the west coast, we have at present no means of determining ; for the few plants, chiefly from the neighbourhood of Mozambique, included in Loureiro's Flora Cochinchinensis, and a very small number collected by JNIr. Salt on the same part of the coast, do not afford materials for comparison.

The character of the collections of Abyssinian Hants made by Mr. Salt in his two journeys, forming part of Sir Joseph Banks's herbarium, and amounting to about 260 species, is somewhat extratropical, and has but little affinity to that of the vegetation of the west coast of Africa.

To the Flora of Ecjypt, that of Congo has still less rela- tion, either in the number or proportions of its natural 476] families : the herbarium, however, includes several species which also belong to Egypt, as Nymphsea Lotus, Cyperus Papyrus and articulatus, Sphenoclea zeylanica, Glinus lotoides, Ethulia conyzoides, and Grangea maderaspatana.

observed in the late Mission to Cummazee, the capital of Ashantee ; and among them a drawing of the fruit and leaf of a plant, there called Attueah or Attuah, vhich is no doubt the Ahee, whose native country is therefore now ascertained.

1 Monodora myristica, Lunal Annonac. p. 80. Becand. Syst. Nat. Reg. Veget. 1, p. 477. 'Anona myristica, GcerL Sem. 2, p. 194, t. 125, p. 1. Liman Hort. Jamaic. 2, p. 10. This remarkable plant is very properly separated from Anona, and considered as a distinct genus by M. Dunal in his monograph of Anonaceaj. The character given of this new genus, however, is not altogether satisfactory, M. de CandoUe's description, from which it is derived, having probably been taken from specimens which he had it not in his power to examine completely. Both these authors have added to this genus Annona microcarpa of Jacquin {Fragm. Bot. p. 40, t. 44, /. 7), established by that author from the fruit of my Cargillia Australis {Prodr. Flor. Nov. Holl. 1, p. 527), which belongs to the very different family of Ebenaceae.

Long, in his History of Jamaica {vol. 3, p. 735), has given the earliest account of Monodora Myristica, under the name of the Jmerican Nutmeg., and considers it to have been probably introduced from South America : according to other accounts, it comes from the Mosquito shore : but there is more reason to suppose that it has been brought by the Negroes from some part of the west coast of Africa.

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