work is the only really good English one of its kind 

 known to me that relates to the Natural history of any part 

 of tropical Africa. The species appears to extend to the 

 West Coast, for a var. amboense (Schinz in Verhandl. Bot. 

 Ver. Prov. Brandenb. xxx. (1889), p. 259, is described 

 as a native of Amboland (Ovampoland), in the 

 German territory of Damara Land. Finally, Pax, as 

 referred to above, regards it as a variety of the West 

 African S. sarmentosus, AD.C. It is a species of this 

 genus, believed to be 8. hispidus, DC, the root of which 

 is said to yield the arrow-poison of some African tribes, 

 and the seeds of which are reputed to be a valuable 

 medicine in the treatment of certain cases of heart disease. 



The plant from which the specimen figured is taken 

 was raised from seeds sent to the Koyal Gardens in 1884 

 by Mrs. Monteiro, herself a valued correspondent of the 

 Royal Gardens. It flowered in a stove, where it was 

 trained to a rafter, for the first time in May, 1894. 



Descr. — A slender climber, quite glabrous ; branches 

 brown, speckled with white, terete, smooth. Leaves three" 

 to five inches long, ovate, obtusely acuminate, undulate, 

 bright green above, pale beneath, base rounded or 

 narrowed ; petiole about half an inch long. Flowers soli- 

 tary, a few in a subterminal cyme, very shortly pedicelled. 

 Calyx-lobes two-thirds of an inch long, ovate, acute, re- 

 curved green, suffused with red, glands at the base within 

 irregular in form and disposition. Corolla-tube twice as 

 long as the calyx, between infundibular and campanulate, 

 upwards of an inch long, and as broad across the mouth, 

 dull yellow with broken red streaks; lobes reflexed, lan- 

 ceolate, narrowed into slender loosely twisted pendulous 

 tails eight inches long, inner surface yellow, outer dull 

 red ; appendages of the mouth two-thirds of an inch long, 

 subulate, erect, fiexuous, yellow. Filaments woolly in 

 the inner face ; awn of anther as long as the cells ; con- 

 nective with a boss on the inner face. Ovary ellipsoid ; 

 style long, slender, tip very unequally 2-fid.— J. D. H. 



Fig. 1, Base of corolla tube and stamens ; 2, anthers viewed from the inner 

 face ; 3, ovary and style -.—All enlarged. 



