KEW GARDEN MUSEUM. 387 
Blue Water-Lily. Nymphæa cerulea. South Africa, etc. A model 
of this, also prepared and presented by Miss Tayspill, may be seen on 
the table of the Room No. 1, of the Museum. 
Fellow Water-Lily. Nuphar luteum, Sm. Europe. Flowers, in al- 
cohol. The leaves are reported to be styptic (Endlicher). The flowers 
have certainly a brandy-like smell, and the pistil is shaped like a flask, 
whence arises the name of the plant in some counties of England, of 
“ Brandy-bottle.” According to Withering, the roots, rubbed with milk, 
destroy crickets and cockroaches ; but swine eat them. The same author 
further adds, that an infusion of a pound of the fresh root to a gallon 
of water has been known to cure a leprous eruption of the arm. 
Spatter-dock. Nuphar advena, dit. Roots. North America. Pro- 
perties I do not find noticed; they are probably the same as those of 
the preceding species, to which it is very closely allied. 
Ord. NELUMBIACE®. WaATER-BEAN FAMILY. 
A Family of aquatic plants, confined to two species, one a native of 
the tropical and subtropical portions of the Old World, and one of like 
regions in the New World. That of the Old World is of great classi- 
cal interest, Nelumbium speciosum, as considered to be the Egyptian 
Bean (xvapos) of Pythagoras; it was formerly common in Egypt as well 
as India, but is now, according to Delile and other travellers, extinct 
in the former country. The seed-vessel, or receptacle of the fruit, is large, 
in shape an inverted cone, and has the nuts placed loose in apertures 
or cells on the surface; this has been not inaptly compared to the rose 
of a watering-pot. The whole, Sir James Smith tells us, “in process 
. of time separates from the stalk, and, laden with ripe oval nuts, it floats 
down the water. The nuts vegetating, it becomes a cornucopia of 
young sprouting plants, which at length break loose from their confine- 
ment, and take root in the mud.” This peculiar mode of propagation 
has evidently occasioned the plant, in conjunction with the water, to 
be adopted as the symbol of fertility, in which point of view it has, 
from the remoted antiquity, been considered with religious veneration 
in India, and makes a conspicuous figure in the mythology of that an- 
cient country. In the fourth volume of the ‘ Ameenitates Academicze,’ 
p. 234, continues Sir James Smith, “a carved horn of a rhinoceros, 
sent to Linnzeus from China, is described. This is now before me, and 
is an excellent specimen of oriental sculpture, evidently alluding to the 
