off the thick fleshy fibres which will endure through the 
winter after the bulbs are taken off. They must be put in 
a box or large pot, and covered with dry sand or earth, and 
kept quite dry till the following April or May. If Amancaes 
be set in the stove at the beginning of May, and watered, it 
will flower immediately, and should be removed into a green- 
house as soon as the first bud js ready to expand. The sul- 
phur-coloured mule may be forced as easily. It is a beautiful 
plant, and has produced flowers in which the expansion of the 
cup was three and a half inches, and of the limb five and a 
half. Its ovules, three in a cell, are bold, and its pollen 
seems fertile. The seed of Ismene is large and round, and 
vegetates immediately in a remarkable manner, forming a 
bulb as big as itself (sometimes much bigger) far under 
ground without pushing any leaf. As soon as the seed rots, 
the young bulb must be left without water, till the next spring. 
A person unaware of the peculiarity of this genus and Cho- 
retis, when he found the seed rotten, would be likely to throw 
away the earth without suspecting the formation of the bulb— 
near the bottom of the pot. If the seedlings of Amancaes 
are grown in loam, I believe they will be twenty years before 
they attain size to flower; in pure white sand, or a very 
sandy compost, I think they may flower the third. I havea 
mule seedling from Amancaes, from seed of last year, which 
is now near two feet high with five leaves. The seedling 
bulbs raised this year from the mule, are larger than the 
natural Amancaes from seed that was sown at the same time.” 
The species now figured is a greenhouse bulb, grows well 
in a mixture of loam, peat, and sand, and flowers from June 
to August, The leaves wither soon after flowering, when it 
must be kept perfectly dry until spring. It will then begin 
to send forth young leaves, and remind the cultivator that it 
requires a plentiful supply of water to perfect its growth. 
It is easily multiplied by offsets which it produces in 
abundance. 
