envied possessor of a set of Forster’s plants collected 
during Cook’s second voyage; and to tracings of the 
drawings of Forster and Parkinson, preserved in the British 
Museum, kindly made for me by Mr. E. G. Baker, F.L.S., 
of the Botanical Department of that Institution. It is 
hardly neccessary to remind the reader that Parkinson 
was the artist on the staff of Sir Joseph Banks during 
Cook’s first voyage, when Dr. Solander, hereafter to be 
alluded to, was the active Botanist on the same staff; as 
also that the two naturalists, J. R. and G. Forster, father 
and son (the latter then only 17 years of age) accom- 
panied Cook on his second voyage. 
The first indication of the Polynesian Tacca that I have | 
found is in the narrative of Cook’s first voyage, Book I. 
Chap. XVII. where, describing the vegetable foods of the 
Tahiti Islanders, he mentions “a root of the Salep kind, 
called by the inhabitants Pia.” A full description of it, 
drawn up on the spot, is contained in the mss. work of 
Dr. Solander, cited above, under the name he gave it of 
Chaitwxa Tacca, and which description only differs from 
that of the specimen here figured in the margins of the 
perianth-lobes being purple, and the tips of the involucral 
bracts being more divided (pinnatifid). 
The earliest published account of the Polynesian Tacca 
appeared in 1778, in J. and G. Forster’s “ Characteres 
Generum,” which was followed ten years later by more 
detailed accounts in G. Forster’s Florula of the Pacific 
Islands, and in his commentary on the esculent plants of 
the same. In the last of these works he identifies with 
his Tacca pinnatifida, the Tacca sativa and T. litorea of 
Rumpf’s “ Herbarium Amboinense,” vol. v. p- 324, 328, t. 
112, 114, published in 1750; in which he is followed by 
Gertner (who changed the specific name to pinnatifolia) 
and by Roxburgh,* who described as 7. pinnatifie speci- 
* Roxburgh, referring to Forster’s description in the Commentatio, goes 
too far in saying that this author “quoted Rumpf’s” 7. phallifera, t. 112 
(error for 113) as a variety of T. litorea. Forster merely alludes to the plate 
(113) as that of a wild variety of Tacca figured by Rumpf as having a para- 
sitic species of Phallus proceeding from the root, and which he had not seen. 
Roxburgh rightly referred the Phallus to his Arum campanulatum (Amor- 
ss campanulatus, Schott), but curiously enough, in his “‘ Flora Indica 
vol. iii. p. 508) he describes the leaf of a Tacca (pinnatifida) as a new species 
of Arum, A. lyratum, (Amorphophallus lyratus, Engl.). 
