In the Desert of Kalahari exists an abundant and varied vegetation. According to Dr. Livingstone, it is an immense plain which nourishes a prodigious quantity of herbaceous plants, generally of very small elevation, and besprinkled at intervals with thickets of bushy shrubs. The herbs which are enabled to withstand the prolonged droughts of these arid localities are species with tuberous roots, creeping or spindle-like, and deeply buried in the ground. The _Citrullus vulgaris_ and _C. amarus_ are found in enormous quantities. Dr. Livingstone speaks of another individual of the gourd tribe, probably a kind of _Cucumis_, whose fruits colour red when ripe, and which has sometimes a sweet and sometimes a bitter flavour. In these vast regions, where a desolating aridity prevails, the rivers and streams dry up for a great portion of the year, and the soil of their bed, generally black and loamy, is rapidly covered with a profuse vegetation, composed in great part of grasses and rush-plants. The banks of the rivers Mokolo and Zouga, and the shores of Lake Ngami, are covered with herbs and small thorny stunted bushes, including the _Acacia detinens_. In the south of Africa the soil is so dry that only plants of a fleshy consistency can endure the heat; elsewhere, in more temperate climes, these latter plants are also very abundant, but the surrounding herbage destroys them. Among those which grow there in great numbers I may name the Ficoideæ, and particularly the _Mesembryanthemum inflexum_, which is very widely spread, and whose stems and leaves are eaten by herbivorous animals. This plant, says Dr. Livingstone, is so useful that it is cultivated by the Dutch Boers on an extensive scale. On his northward route towards Linianty, this illustrious traveller fell in with meadows of such rank fertility that its herbage frequently rose above his vehicles. The natives, designated Makalatos, show some agricultural taste and skill, and cultivate durra, maize, two kinds of beans, arachides, pumpkins, and the like. Everywhere, along the banks of the Gambye and the Liba, he met with exceptionally fertile land, where the grasses attained an unusual development. On the Liba bloomed wide verdurous plains, consisting of plants with dazzling corollas and gramineæ of tall stature. Owing to the burning heats which blight these districts, herbaceous plants are developed with extraordinary rapidity. In the rainy season the Liba meadows are covered, like our own, with an immense variety of mushrooms, some nutritious, others poisonous. The former are much relished by the natives. One of the most common, and one of the finest flavour, is found, says Dr. Livingstone, on all the ant-hills; it is completely white, very good even when eaten raw, and about eight inches in diameter. There is another of a brilliant red or superb blue, but it is poisonous.