the name of Sikimine to the poison. But the first definite 

 information regarding the true Star Anise is contained in 

 a letter addressed to me by the late Dr. Hance in October, 

 1881, which contained seeds of the true plant received that 

 morning from Pakhoi in South China. And in the same 

 year Mr. Ford of the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens sent 

 to Kew fruit and fragments of the leaves of the true plant 

 from Pakhoi. In his Report on the Hong Kong Botanical 

 Gardens for 1882, Mr. Ford states that Mr. Kopsch, Com- 

 missioner of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs at 

 Pakhoi, had obtained for him a few seedlings of the true 

 Star Anise, of which three had survived, and had attained 

 a height of nine feet in 1886, and flowered in the Botanical 

 Gardens. He adds that they prove to belong to an entirely 

 different species from I. anisatum and all other described 

 species. In 1883 Mr. Ford sent living plants to the Royal 

 Gardens, Kew, which flowered in November, 1887, and it 

 is from one of these that the figure here given was drawn. 

 In 1886 Mr. Ford sent dried specimens from his nine feet 

 high plant. 



There are several species of the genus llUcium to which 

 L verum is more nearly allied than to /. anisatum, all 

 having globose flowers, but all differing from verum in the 

 increased number of perianth-segments, stamens and 

 carpels ; these are the Indian I. Griffithii, H. f. and T., and 

 L majus, H. f. and T., respectively from the Khasia Moun- 

 tains in Eastern Bengal, and the mountains of Tenasserim, 

 and the I. cambodianum , Hance (in Trimen's Jour. Bot. 

 1876, p. 240, /. cambodglanum, Pierre, Flore Forestiere 

 Cochinchin. t. 4). The latter, a broad-leaved species with 

 long-peduncled flowers, is a native of the Elephant Moun- 

 tains in Cochin China, From all these I. verum differs, 

 not only in the number of parts of the flower, but as Mr. 

 Holmes (Conservator of the Museum of the Pharmaceutical 

 Society), who has been so good as to examine them all for 

 me, informs me, in taste of foliage and fruit, by which 

 alone he could distinguish them, and pronounce /. verum 

 to be specifically distinct from all others. 



With regard to Loureiro's I. anisatum, from South 

 China, under which he cites Linnaeus and the Japanese 

 Skimmi of Ksempfer, it is altogether a doubtful plant. It 

 is described as having yellow flowers, a six-leaved calyx, 



