The genus Arctotis, as at prefent conflituted, contains 

 fpecies which do not well accord with one another, nor even 

 come under the fame order in the Linnean- fyftem, the prefent 

 plant properly belonging to the order of Polygamia Frus- 

 tranea. Arctotis anihemoides y paradoxa t and dentate are, 

 however, certainly congeners, and Gartner has made an 

 attempt to form them into a diftinct genus, under the name 

 ofURSiNiA, in which we might have been led to have fol- 

 lowed him, but unluckily our plant wants his effential character 

 of a double pappus on the crown of the feed. It fre- 

 quently, though not generally, happens that the floret re- 

 mains attached to the feed after this is ripe ; is it pofiible 

 that, in the examination of a dried fpecimen, fuch a circum- 

 ftance could have deceived this accurate Botaniit ? However 

 this may be, our plant has certainly no fuch double pappus, 

 one within the other, as he has defcribed and figured, although 

 it has, which is very unufual, a fort of pappus at both ends, a 

 membranous crown at one end, and a pencil of hairs at the 

 other. By this laft, the feed attaches itfelf to whatever it hap- 

 pens to touch, and by this means may be conveyed to a greater 

 diftance than by the help of the wind. 



Though poffeffing no particular beauty, it is, in feveral re- 

 flects, curious to the eye of a common obferver. All the 

 e of the flower is of a lively yellow colour, the outfide 

 purple. The buds nod, but the flowers when expanded ftand 

 •t ; as the flower decays, it again nods till the feeds are 

 ripe, when it rifes upright, and the crown of the feed expand- 

 ing at the fame time, it very much refembles fome flower of 

 another family, having a corolla of five white fegments and 

 a brown ftar in the middle, not very unlike a fiatice. The 

 whole plant fmells like Chamomile. 



It is an annual, a native of the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 thrives very well in the open border, and if brought forward 

 by being fown on a hot-bed in the Spring, will produce plenty 

 of feeds. If kept within doors, the flowers dtminifrr in fize 

 and lofe their purple colour. It has been cultivated at the 

 Botanic Garden at Brompton fince the year 1795, at which 

 time it was firft raifed there from feeds obtained from the 

 Cape of Good Hof>e. 



