Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...rhizome, two or three feet in diameter, lying on the surface of the ground. Several species of fine flowered Begonias have recently been discovered. There is one species of Capparis (Capparis corymbifera) which has large showy rosy-white flowers. An Oncobea, of the Bixad tribe, has handsome white flowers with yellow stamens. The Oncobea spinosa, which is considerably more rare, is especially interesting on account of its yielding a beautiful spherical nut, which is converted by the wild Kaffirs into snuffboxes. The true grasses are very numerous in Natal, as they are almost everywhere. Many of them constitute tine pasture. Some of them are cultivated by the Kaffirs for their grain, the chief amongst these being a millet, which yields the 'Kaffir corn, ' from which the native beer is brewed. There is also a large holcus (the Holcus saccharatuni) known among the natives as Imfee, which looks very much like a small sugar cane, and which is cultivated by the Kaffirs for the sweetness of its juice. The timber-yielding plants of Natal are of great interest, and of considerable value. The timber trees are found in two distinct localities: the thick bush of the coast, from which many of the harder woods of small size are derived, and the forests of the mountaintops, where the trees are densely packed into the kloofs and ravines of the hill sides at a high elevation, and where some of them attain to considerable size. The slopes of the Karkloof range in the central highlands of the colony, and the ravines of the Tugela and Umkomanzi rivers, are occupied by forests of this character. One of the best known, and upon the whole most generally useful, of the Natal woods, and which, therefore, may be spoken of first, is the yellow-wood of the colony (Geel Hout; Uam Roba). ..
