three are or are not in reality forms of one and the same 
species. 
The following notes, derived entirely from native samples in 
my herbarium, may help to clear up some of the difficulties at- 
tending the discrimination of the species, if, as I am inclined to 
believe, they be really such. 
1. Methonica superba, Lam. (Gloriosa superba, Zinn.).—All 
my Indian specimens, and the species seems to be exclusively 
Indian, and from various parts of that extensive region, Ceylon 
and the Madras Peninsula in the west, to Bengal and the Malay 
Peninsula, Tavoy (Wallich), Siam (Schomburgk), Banjermassing, 
Borneo (Jo#/ey) in the east, and to Kumaon (elev. 4,800 feet, 
in the north, Strachey and Winterbottom) ; all, without a single 
exception, exhibit the very narrow, refracted, and yet tolerably 
straight, deeply undulato-crispate petals, so characteristic of this 
species. 
2. M. virescens, Lindl. (see our Tab. 4938).—Of this my de- 
cided native specimens, with quite spathulate petals, scarcely un- 
dulated, and never crisped, as in MM. superba, are from South 
Africa, viz. Albany and Natal. My others are cultivated speci- 
mens from native roots; but all agree in the broad superior part 
of the petal, with the apices recurved over the centre of the 
flower. ‘These petals are seldom seen in a horizontal position, 
_ In this respect agreeing with J. superba. 
3. MW. Abyssinica, Achil. Richard, from Abyssinia, as its name 
imphes.—I have received this, with the above name attached, from 
the Mus. Herb. Paris (x. 346), and also from Dr. Hochstetter, 
under the name of Clinostylis speciosa, Hochst., in “ Flora, 1844, 
p- 46.” The height of each of my two specimens, including the 
rather long and stout tuber, is under two feet, and there appears 
no disposition to branch* or to be scandent; the leaves appear 
to be nearly all opposite, and the upper ones alone are cirrhife- 
rous, with small and very weak téndrils. Can this be due toa 
dry soil and burning climate? ‘he petals are very broad-lan- 
ceolate, (not dilated upwards,) apparently of a uniform orange- 
colour ; one of the flowers has the refracted petals with recurved 
apices, as in AZ. virescens. But the stamens and style and 
anthers are shorter; and I may have erred in considering this a 
form of MZ. virescens, under our Tab. 4938. 
4. M. grandiftora, Hook.—Specimens in my herbarium, which 
I would confidently refer to this, and agreeing with the charac- 
ters here given, are from tropical, and chiefly tropical Western, 
Africa; Fernando Po, x. 72, W. Gustav Mann; Sierra Leone, 
Mr. Morson, from the Herb. of Robert Brown ; Great Bassa 
* [ find among a collection of Abyssinian plants, lately the property of Mr. 
Robert Brown, a specimen evidently of the same pl 
: _- a t, gathered by Dr. Rohr, 
at Alia Amba, which is branched a) subscandent. ee ee 
