One kind, the _Babiana sulphurea_, greatly resembles in its flower the common Gladiolus of our gardens, but it has round, stiff-coated seeds. The sword-shaped leaves arise from an underground bulb-like root, which buds near its point so as to rise in the ground to the surface, and the flowers are very handsome. The plants flourish in the soil of the great plains of the Cape of Good Hope, where they are exposed for two or three months to rain, but where afterwards and for the rest of the year the earth becomes so dry that hardly a vestige of vegetation remains. The Baboons, when they roamed over these plains formerly, used to dig up the root and eat it voraciously. The Baboons are more brute-like than the rest of the Monkeys in appearance, and therefore have not that singular resemblance to man which many of the others possess either generally or in their faces. Their dog-shaped head, a long muzzle, and a curious fulness on each side of the long nose, distinguish them at once from any other Quadrumana. With one or two exceptions the nostrils are quite at the end of the muzzle, and are separated by a narrow piece of gristle; they rather project beyond the nostril, and can be placed close to the ground as the Baboon runs along to follow or track a scent. Their eyes are close together, and are deeply set, their ears are moderately large, and their neck is rather long, and as their common position is squatting on the hinder quarters like a Dog, the long muzzle is kept straight out, or occasionally is hung down over the chest. They have a short body, which seems compressed at the sides, and the shoulders are wide, the chest being capacious. As they run very much like Dogs, the hind-quarters are strong, and the hinder limbs longer than the front ones, and have a decided heel and strong muscles. They trot and canter, but rarely bound or jump over the ground, and they scramble and climb up rocks with the aid of the power of prehension, which is great even in the hinder extremities, the thumb being strong but short. When standing on all-fours, the shoulders are high, and the body slopes slightly to the tail, which is stuck high up, and some have short and others long tails.