known to botanists. De Candolle, so late as 1824, in his ‘ Pro- 
dromus,’ has only recorded thirty-one species, including Bal- 
samina, now universally united with Jmpatiens. Dr. Arnott, 
scarcely ten years later, added twenty new species from India 
alone. Drs. Hooker and Thomson, in their valuable ‘‘ Preecur- 
sores ad Floram Indicam, in the fourth volume of the Journal of 
the Proceedings of the Linnzan Society,” have described ninety- 
six inhabiting India. It is true the characters are mostly drawn 
from dried specimens, and it must be confessed that the flowers 
of the Balsaminee suffer much by the process of drying for 
the herbarium. It is this circumstance which renders it so dif- 
ficult to ascertain whether the present plant be a form of Lin- 
neus’s J. latifolia, as intimated by Thwaites and Hooker fil. 
and Thomson, or not. Even with the opportunity of examining. 
living specimens, so variable are many of the Balsams, that Dr. 
Hooker hesitates whether to consider the Zmpatiens pulcherrima 
of Dalzell in this work (/.c.) identical with our present species. - 
It is indeed a very near ally, if not specifically the same; but, as 
Dr. Hooker observes, the latter is altogether a larger plant, the 
flowers much paler in colour, and with more of the lilac tint, 
the fructiferous pedicels are erect, the stem and petioles green, 
not a fine purple, as in our J. flaccida. 
I. flaccida is a native of Ceylon, at elevations upon the moun- 
tains of from 4000 to 6000 feet, collected by Mrs. General 
Walker, Gardener, and Thwaites. A variety with slightly hairy 
pedicels and capsules, is considered to be a native of the Malay 
Islands and Moulmein ; and if Dalzell’s Z. pulcherrima be the 
same, it is found in the Concan and perhaps other parts of the 
Madras peninsula. 7 
