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 230 OBSERVATIOXS ON PLANTS

Oudiiey, cncleavoured to preserve the more striking and useful plants which he met with. His collection Avas ori- ginally more considerable ; but before it reached England many of the specimens were entirely destroyed. It still includes several of the medicinal plants of the natives ; but these beino; without either flowers or fruit, cannot be deter- mined.

209] In the whole herbarium, the number of undescribed species hardly equals twenty ; and among these not one new genus is found.

The plants belonging to the vicinity of Tripoli were sent to me by Dr. Oudney, before his departure for Eezzan. This part of the collection, amounting to one hundred species, was merely divided into those of the immediate neighbourhood of Tripoli, and those from the mountains of Tarhona and Imsalata.

It exceeds in extent the herbarium formed by Mr. Ritchie near Tripoli, and on the Gharian hills, which, however, though containhig only fifty-nine species, includes twenty- seven not in Dr. Oudney's herbarium.

The specimens in Mr. Ritchie's collection are carefully preserved, the particular places of growth in most cases given, and observations added on the structure of a few ; sufficient at least to prove, that much information on the vegetation of the countries he visited might have been ex- pected from that ill-fated traveller.

In these two collections united, hardly more than five species are contained not already published in the works that have appeared on the botany of North Africa ; parti- cularly in the ' Flora Atlantica' of M. Desfontaines, in the ' Elore d'Egypte ' of M. Delile, and in the ' Elorae Libycse Specimen ' of Professor Viviani, formed from the herbarium of the traveller Delia Cella.

The plants collected in the Great Desert and its oases, between Tripoli and the northern confines of Bornou, and which somewhat exceed a hundred, are, with about eight or ten exceptions, also to be found in the works now men- tioned. And, among those of Bornou and Soudan, which fall short of one hundred, very few species occur

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