318 BOTANICAL INFORMATION 



fidianum, a name Mr. Gawler had previously applied to it in Brando s 

 •Journal of Science and the Arts/ i. 181;— quoting however Scilla 

 pomeridiana of De CandoUe and Eedoute : but stating nothing of its 

 introduction, nor of its native country, further than that " the native 

 place does not seem to have been ascertained;" and "we suspect the 

 plant to be of the same species with a dilapidated sample from the 

 Cape of Good Hope, preserved in the Banksian Herbarium under the 

 title Anthericum HcahrumP 



3. In 1834, at the late Mrs. Marryat's, flowered at Wimbledon, a 

 bulb which had been collected during the recent surveying voyage of 

 her nephew, Captain (now Sir Edward) Belcher, E.N. ; " but she was 

 uncertain where he collected it." This Mr. D. Don rightly referred to 

 the Bcilla pomeridiana^ De Cand. (Anthericum, Gawl), and published 

 it in Sweet's Brit. Fl. Gard. ser. 2, t. 381, under the name of Phalan- 

 gium pomeridianum ; but could offer no suggestions as to its native 

 country or property. On these we can throw a little light, for our 

 friend Mr, J. Smith, Curator at the Koyal Gardens of Kew, remembers 

 well the receiving a letter from Mr. Barclay, the Kew Collector, during 

 the voyage just alluded to, in which he mentioned among ^ the remark- 

 able plants of California the "bulb of the Soap-plant:'' and we may 

 here remark, that probably but for this quality the bulbs of a plant, 

 possessing so little claim to beauty in the flowers, would never have 

 been sent to Europe at all. 



4. The fourth and last notice of this plant to which we have specially 

 to refer, is that of Dr. Lindley, who gives a specific character, and re- 

 marks upon what he supposes a new Californian plant, in Bot. Register, 

 1841, Misc. p. 53, n. Ill, under the name Ornithogalum (Chlorogalum) 

 divarlcatum. The bulbs were sent by N. B. Hindes, Esq., Surgeon 

 on board H.M.S. * Sulphur,' collected during a voyage in the Pacific 

 This notice was followed by an excellent figure in the volume of the 

 succeeding year (1842), tab. 28. Here the native country is deter- 

 mined, and observations respecting the genus offered, showing that, 

 " in a large Natural Order so extremely simple in structure as the Lth- 

 acetJBy the differences between the genera are necessarily very slight ; 

 and hence we find that such groups as Scilla^ Ornithogalum, Allium, 

 Gagea, Urginea, and many more, are distinguished as much by habit as 

 by any absolute variations of structure." Thus he doubts if this plant 

 be a genuine Qrnithogahm/ " none of the genuine species of which 

 have a branched inflorescence ; and its singular perianth, whose seg- 



