Many bulbs of this pretty and variable Crocus were sent 

 to Spoffbrth, in 184.0 and 1841, at my request, by Mons. Pal- 

 medo, the British Consul at Bastia, having been procured 

 through his kind offices by Signor Romagnuoli from Turiani, 

 and the Bocca di San Antonio, three or four leagues from 

 Bastia, from Corte, Mount San Lionardo, Pigno, Capo Corso, 

 and the Torre di Seneca. The greatest pains were taken to 

 discover the C. minimus of Decandolle ; it is certainly one 

 of the smaller varieties of insularis, which name, given by 

 Mons. Gay, though posterior, must be preserved to the species, 

 because minimus is only applicable to the smaller varieties. 

 The species, which has sometimes a faint smell of primrose, 

 approaches most nearly to the Italian C. sua veolens* from which 

 it may be distinguished, in all its varieties, by the absence of 

 yellow in the throat, which is deep in both Suaveolens and 

 Imperatonianus. The absence or presence of yellow in the 

 throat seems to be an invariable feature in Croci. Insularis 

 produces usually only one shoot and flower, and no bract; 

 but the fourth rare variety found on M. Pigno and M. 

 d'Oleastro, approaches to C. versicolor, by. a two-flowered invo- 

 lucre, and sometimes, though rarely, a lorate bract, and the 

 leaf one- (if not two-) nerved; but it conforms too closely with 

 its compatriots in other respects, to be separated as a species. 

 They grow on the hills of schist, (talq schisteux decom- 

 posee, Momagn.) and are rare in the W. of the island. Ac- 

 cording to Mons. Gay they extend into Sardinia. The genus 

 reaches from the Atlantic to the Caspian ; the roots of the 

 Pyrenees in Aquitania, Cevennes, the Swiss Alps, the Danube 

 to about Trajan's bridge, the high ground of S. Podolia, in 

 lat. 49, that N. of Odessa, Tauria, and Caucasus to the Cas- 

 pian Sea form its northern limits. Tangiers, Malta, Cyprus, 

 Crete, and Aleppo are the lowest ascertained S. limits of the 

 race, about lat. 35. I cannot ascertain whether it extends to 

 the high grounds near Damascus ; nor have I been able to 

 learn where or by what geological formation it is stopped in 

 Persia and S.E. of the Caspian. The alluvial tracts of Poland 

 and the Ukraine, and the salt plains arrest it on the N. and 

 N.E. Naturalized in some parts of England, it is certainly 

 not indigenous. The involucre of C. imperatonianus usually 

 contains a secondary involucre to the second spathe. — W. H. 



For the foregoing account, and the accompanying drawing 

 we have to return our acknowledgments to the learned Dean 

 of Manchester, by whom these charming plants have been 

 studied with peculiar care. 



