33 
and perfect state, one of which I sent to Calcutta, to a much esteemed relative of the late Sir J. E. Smith, with a 
request that she would forward it to that eminent botanist ; in whose herbarium, now the property of the Linnean 
Society, the specimen is preserved, designated by the name of Zriocoryne nidularis, which I had proposed for the plant, 
and with the letter from my amiable friend attached to it, dated Calcutta, the 30th of September, 1821. But before 
I visited Nipal I had furnished specimens to the late Sir J oseph Banks and others, and in 1824 I transmitted numerous 
specimens to the Honourable Company's Museum at the India House. The author of the Prodromus Flore Nepalensis, 
with that delicacy of feeling which does him such infinite credit, and which he has uniformly evinced ever since he 
has done me the honour to avail himself of the harvest gathered by myself and my native assistants, exercises his 
talents as a scholar, by castigating the specific name gossypinus, which I had given to the plant, and substituting 
gossipiphora for it, I presume on the same grounds which prompted him to disapprove a name given to another plant 
by the first living botanist in the following classical terms: “ nomen (Spermadictyonis) nimis auris terribile est 
servandum." 
Our little plant occupies rocky and exposed situations approaching the limits of perpetual snow, among the highest 
alps of the Himalaya, about Gossain Than, and also at Bhuddrinath, where it was found by Robert Blinkworth. 
Nature has protected it in a very extraordinary manner against the effects of the severe cold which prevails during nine 
months of the year in those lofty regions, and the intense heat of the short summer, by clothing it in a very thick and 
soft dress of cotton. Indeed the whole plant resembles a figure made of cotton, and formed into the shape of a club 
standing upright on the ground, its upper or broad end sometimes as thick as two closed fists. "The root is long 
and tapering, almost fusiform. “The stem is thick and fleshy, undivided, and completely hidden; it is hollow in 
the middle, the cavity being replete with a very delicate web of white fibres; it widens at the apex into a flattish, 
somewhat pitted area, from which the small flower-heads arise. The leaves are numerous, erect, inserted in all direc- 
tions along the stem by their broad bases; they are toothed, and of a narrow linear shape; and, excepting the lower- 
most, and the tips of the others, they are entirely concealed in the white cotton. The flower-heads are small, oblong, 
pale violet, sessile, and crowded into a dense, slightly convex tuft, which is so completely imbedded within the nest 
formed by the copious woolliness of which the upper part of the plant almost entirely consists, that they can only be 
seen by dividing it gently, and by separating the inner leaves which surround the inflorescence like feathers. 
Plate CXXXVIIL Fig. 1. A flower-head, detached. 2. Involucre, opened. 3. Floret, with its copious down. 4. Stamens. 
5. Pistil. 6. A young plant from Bhuddrinath. 
CEROPEGIA LUCIDA. Tab. 139. 
VoLUBILIS glabra ramosa ; radice fibrosá ; foliis oblongo-lanceolatis, acuminatis, basi acutiusculis ; floribus umbel- 
latis, laciniis calycis elongatis, recurvatis, corollæ lanceolatis, longè attenuatis, apice ligulato ciliatis. 
Habitat in Sillet. Floret mensibus Septembris et Octobris. In Horto Calcuttensi floret eodem tempore. 
PrawTA gracilis, ramosa, volubilis, glabra. Raprx fibrosa. DAVISA Ramıque teretes, ep End peces er 
blongo-lanceolata, acuminata, basi acuta, nunc obtusata, 5-pollicaria, subcarnosa; supr — di ævia, -" bonn p i à 
(lina costà elevatà, scabriusculà marginibusque minutìm ciliatis. fiar pu E kon umm tec: PTC mon 
asperulus. CorpuscwLa pauca, carnosa, subulata, axillaria et ad apicem pan intra basin folii. E pm s m E me 
ittulati, glabri, 2-pollicares, pauci dispositi in umbellas solitarias, extra axillares. PEDUNCULI edniiod; ru vim " y p ; 
> mee db partiales pollicares. CaLyx glaber ; lacinice lineari-subulatæ, elongate et graciles, extrorsúm recurvatæ. COROLLA 
S Wi "UE 
Er laciniæ lanceolate, apice cohærentes, valde attenuate in acumen 
g v 7 i vix dilatatum longitudine sequans ; 
labra, clavata; limbus tubum basi vix dilata i : "RO e ban ^ 
Micron obtusum, purpureum, pilis longis, fulgentibus ciliatum. Genrrania basin tubi occupantia, valdé parva. Corona STAMINEÆ lo 
3 2 
conniventes, cuneati, obtusi. 
, i ; 3. Col de- 
Plate CXXXIX. Fig. 1. Calyx opened, showing the pistil. 2. Corolla opened, with the column at the base olumn de 
tached 4. A dletsiched lobe of the column. 5. Corpuscule, with the pollen-masses attached. 
K 
Vor. II. 
