the flowers were partly decayed and discoloured in conse- 

 quence of having been packed in wet moss. Otherwise 

 it might have gone on growing, and attained complete 

 development, as there was a great store of reserve 

 food in the thickened caudex. The whole plant weighed 

 ten ounces, and the fleshy caudex or stem was eight 

 inches in its greatest circumference. From the speci- 

 mens in the Kew Herbarium and Desfontaine's de- 

 scription in the work cited above, it would appear that 

 Cistanche violacea sometimes flowers the first season, when 

 the stem grows relatively tall, and only about an inch 

 thick at the base ; and sometimes it forms a very thick 

 caudex the first season, and flowers the second, after the 

 disappearance of the host-plant from which it derived its 

 great store of food. The plants that flower the first season 

 have altogether the habit and aspect of an ordinary broom- 

 rape; and a very careful examination is necessary to 

 establish the specific identity of the two conditions. Mrs. 

 Dent's friend, who sent the specimen, states that the 

 people of Biskra scrape the root, and take it as a remedy 

 for colic. At the request of Kew, with a view to cultiva- 

 tion, a second consignment was made, but unfortunately 

 the specimens were cut off at the base of the inflorescence. 

 It should be added that the colour of the flowers in the 

 plate is perhaps not quite exact, in consequence of deterio- 

 ration in transit. 



Descr.—A fleshy, leafless herb, destitute of chlorophyll, 

 and parasitic on the roots of various Chenopodiacese, 

 Gypsophila alba, Statice monopetala, &c. Stem six to 

 fifteen inches high, simple or rarely branched, usually 

 about one inch thick, but sometimes as much as six to eight 

 m girth, densely clothed with fleshy, imbricating scales, the 

 lower deltoid or rounded, the upper gradually thinner, 

 longer, narrower and less crowded, uppermost free and 

 bract-like ; at length all dry and shrivelled. Flowers 

 purple or violet-purple, about an inch in diameter, and one 

 and a half inch long, at first very densely crowded. Spikes 

 elongating in development, and sometimes as much as six 

 to eight inches long. Bracts ovate-oblong, obtuse, equal- 

 ling the calyx. Calyx scarious, five-lobed; lobes nearly 

 equal, oblong, rotundate. Corolla curved with an oblique 

 limb ; lobes of the limb nearly equal, rotundate, recurved, 



