MR. THOMSON, who has recently returned from the expedition of the Royal Geographical Society to Central Africa, has brought to Kew a considerable collection of plants from the plateaux round Lake Nyassa and Lake Tanganyika. The plants from an elevation of 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea-level contain a large proportion of Cape and characteristically temperate types. Amongst the former are the well-known Dierama (Sparaxis) pendula, Scilla rigidifolia, Buphane toxicaria (the great poison bulb of Natal and the Transvaal), a fine Morœa with a long tube and bright purple flowers as large as those of Iris fœtidissima, a Gladiolus, a Pelargonium, more than one species of Gnidia and Helichrysum, and a proteaceous shrub (probably Faurea, which extends to Abyssynia) with large heads of flowers. Of characteristically temperate types there are species of Geranium, Rumex, Cerastium, Coalamintha, and a Scabiosa, perhaps identical with our European and English S. Columbaria. Upon the plateaux below 6,000 feet the vegetation assumes a sub-tropical character. Here he met with a tree-fern of the genus Cyathea, Agauria salicifolia, Hook, fil, an ericaceous shrub common to Bourbon, Madagascar, and the Cameroons, representatives of Mimulopsis, Hibiscus, Clematis, Phyllanthus, Gerbera, Smithia, Acalypha, Pentas, Thunbergia, Buchnera, Striga, a shrubby Spermacoce, a curious Loranthus with broad leaves and tubular flowers densely clothed with yellow hairs, Hypoxis Villosa, several fine Dombeyas, Vernonias, and Combretums, a genus of Hedysareœ with flowers in heads like those of the hop, and a curious broad-leaved Euphorbia, with very large hand-like glands to the involucre. The specimens are well selected and excellently dried. It is probable that nearly all of them are in a condition in which their botanical position can be settled, and that although upon a hasty glance there do not seem to be any strongly-marked new generic types, a good many of the species will prove new to science. The marked northern extension of the Cape flora at comparatively high elevations in Central Africa is a fact of importance. It quite supports the theory that that flora is of great antiquity, and that what exists of it at the Cape is only a survival from a period when it was probably far more extensively diffused, though perhaps less highly specialised. It is much to be desired that travellers in Central Africa would do all in their power to collect dried specimens of the vegetation of elevations above 6,000 feet.