work of another South African botanical traveller, the late 
James Backhouse,’ the founder of the famous Nurseries 
-at York. In his instructive and interesting ‘Visit to 
Mauritius and South Africa,’? which he undertook for 
philanthropic purposes, Backhouse only once mentions 
seeing Strelitzia Augusta, and that was at Plattenberg Bay, 
a bay on the coast some 300 miles east of Cape Town, and 
where the Oliphant River falls into the sea. It would be 
as interesting to know the geographical area occupied by 
S. Augusta as to discover that of S. Nicolai. 
S. Nicolai differs from S. Augusta in its larger bracts 
and flowers, and in the hastate combined petals, which 
are further of a pale blue colour. (In S. Augusta these are 
round at the base and white.) It seems to have been first 
noticed as a distinct species in the Imperial Gardens of 
St. Petersburgh, where it flowered in 1858, and was named 
by Regel and Korne after the Emperor Nicholas. It is 
alluded to in a note in the Gardener’s Chronicle under 
the name of S. Augusta, which note brought a state- 
ment from M. Henriquez of the Coimbra Botanical 
Garden (Portugal), to the effect that the same plant flowers 
annually there. It must be left to the botanists of South 
Africa to discover its native country, and whether the 
few characters that distinguish it from 8. Augusta are 
constant or not. The plant from which the accompanying 
figure was taken had a stem twenty-five feet high, and 
flowered in the winter months. In European Gardens it 
1s treated as a green-house plant, in respect of which I 
may state that S. Augusta which was figured in this work 
from a specimen that flowered in the Palm House, also 
throve and flowered regularly for many years in the 
- Temperate House.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Flowers with the sepals narrowed, showing the two combined and small 
ne petal; 2, apex of combined petals stamens and style; both of the natural 
size. 
