below three or four large, sheathing, membranous scales, 

 and at the extremity a spike or raceme a foot in length, of 

 large, yellowish-white, almost globose, fleshy flowers, yield- 

 ing a peculiar fragrance, somewhat resembling that of the 

 Nuphar lutea. Bracteas much shorter than the germen, 

 ovato-acuminate, often carinate, rigid, green tinged with 

 purple. The three outer petals of the flowers are broadly 

 ovate, almost rotundate, very concave, the two inner ones 

 rather more delicate, broadly obovate, all of them subcon- 

 nivent. Lip erect, broadly obovate, truncate, erect, thick 

 and fleshy, having a large excrescence or protuberance, 

 somewhat wrinkled, on the disk, often sprinkled with deep 

 purple dots, which reach to the base, where the lip is joint- 

 ed upon the prolonged base of the column. Column adnate 

 with and decurrent upon the bases of the petals, its upper 

 part alone free and standing forward nearly horizontally, 

 the rest is extended downwards, remarkably dilated and 

 thickened, bearing on each side two large, fleshy wings, 

 which are erect, and reach nearly to the top of the column, 

 rounded at the apex, below the middle bearing a conspicu- 

 ous tooth : the whole is of the same waxy white with the 

 petals, but the upper or inner side of the wings is beauti- 

 fully sprinkled with deep purple dots. Anther hemispher- 

 ical, white, two-celled. Pollen-masses 2, clavate, flattened, 

 with a fissure at the outer margin, deep yellow, waxy, firm, 

 fixed upon an oblong-acuminate membrane, with its mar- 

 gins recurved ; this projects beyond the anther-case, so as 

 to resemble the beak of a bird. Germen cylindrico-clavate, 

 furrowed and slightly twisted. 



In the year 1826, Henry Barnard, Esq. of Truxillo in 

 Peru, communicated to Richard Harrison, Esq. of Liver- 

 pool, a bulb of a remarkable, parasitical, orchideous plant, 

 which he had found in the neighbourhood of Panama, and 

 the flower of which is there looked upon with no little con- 

 sideration, and known to the inhabitants by the name of 

 " el Spirito Santo." The reason for this appellation was 

 quite obvious on the blossoming of the plant, which did 

 not occur in Mr. Harrison's stove, until the summer of the 

 present year, 1831, when the centre of the flower exhibited 

 a column which, with its summit or anther, and the project- 

 ing gland of the pollen -masses, together with the almost 

 erect wings, bore a striking resemblance to a Dove, the 

 emblem of the third person in the Trinity. El Spirito 

 Santo was therefore applied by the same people, and in 

 the same religious feeling as, dictated the naming of the 

 ' c Passion-Flower. ' ' 



So 



