mens cultivated in the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, of a 
plant which he had received from “ the Malay countries.” 
Of Rumpf’s two figures which represent what he takes for 
the cultivated and wild forms of Tacca (sativa and litorea), 
that of 7’. sativa is of a leaf only on a tuber covered with 
bulbils ; that of 7. litorea is of a plant with small lanceo- 
late bracts, quite unlike those of Forster’s 7. pinnatifida, 
but closely agreeing with Roxburgh’s description and ex- 
cellent drawing of the same which is now in the Kew 
Herbarium. 
Up to the date of the publication of the second volume 
of Roxburgh’s “ Flora Indica ” (1832), nothing was known 
of any continental Indian Tacca (for Gertner’s citation of 
Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus, vol. xi. t. 21, refers to an 
Aroid. a species of T’heriophonum ?). More recently, how- 
ever, a Tacca known as I. pinnatifida has been found 
abundantly in the Concan and Ceylon, and is cultivated 
in Travancore and perhaps elsewhere in India and as it 
accords with Roxburgh’s Malayan plant, the question 
arises whether or no the narrow bracted Western species 
which extends from Amboyna to Western India, is specifi- 
cally the same with the broad bracted Polynesian. In 
favour of an affirmative answer it may be urged, that there 
is considerable variation amongst the Polynesian broad 
bracted forms. The flowers of the Fiji plant here figured 
are large and altogether green. Forster, as before ob- 
served, says of the Tahiti one that the perianth segments 
are bordered with purple, and Nuttall who recognized the 
difference between the Indian plant (which by oversight 
he regarded as the type) and the Polynesian, called the 
latter 7. oceanica, and described the flowers as small brown 
or brownish-red. As far as can be determined from dried 
Specimens in the Kew Herbarium and other data, the 
broad cucullate bracted form extends from the Sandwich 
and Society Islands to the Fijis, N. Australia, the Aru 
Isles, Malacca, and Madagascar (7. madagascariensis, 
Noronha), and both coasts of tropical Africa. That with 
lanceolate bracts from Amboyna to India. A form of the 
latter is fairly well figured in Loddige’s Botanical Cabi- 
nets, t. 692; another, with very narrow leaf-segments, in 
Regel’s Gartenflora, vol. xvii. (1868) p. 162, t. 582 (the 
accompanying analyses of which are purely imaginary) ; 
