native site is not yet ascertained. The autumnal white C. 

 Boryanus of Cephalonia, Modon, and Navarin, appears to 

 differ in little but its season of flowering from iagenseflorus, 

 but I have not yet seen it alive. 



The southern limit of the genus runs near lat. 35", 

 from Tangiers by Malta, Candia, and Cyprus to Aleppo; 

 there it turns northward, following, I believe, the right 

 bank of the Phrat to its source between Erzerum and 

 Trebisond, and from thence it passes between Kurdistan 

 and the Caspian, as far S. as Tabriz, not descending into the 

 plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, and is cut off from the 

 southern shore of the Caspian and from the rest of Persia. 

 Mr. Kotschy found a blue Crocus, (cancellatus) in Syria and 

 near Tabriz, and a white one, probably Boryanus v. Caspicus, 

 near Baalbec and Tabriz. 1 have lately learned from two 

 quarters that the yellow Crocus follows Mount Lebanon 

 southwards from Aleppo and approaches Damascus on the 

 hills, where it is eaten by the natives, who make a pala- 

 table dish of it ; but it cannot cross the Euphrates, and 

 the alluvial plain of Damascus. The genus is stopped to 

 the north of the Caspian by the Volga and the salt plains, 

 C. sativus is a cultivated plant in Cashmere, and the Crocus- 

 like plant of Suleimania seems to be a Merendera or Col- 

 chicum. 



There are yet some vernal races in the Levant ; one 

 C. Fleischerianus on the hills near Smyrna, white-streaked 

 with finely interwoven fibres, and seemingly in some de- 

 gree akin to C. reticulatus albicans ; C. Sieberianus (named 

 more happily, but later, nivalis by Bory St. Vincent) on 

 the very summits of Crete and Taygetus, flowering between 

 patches of snow, at the height of above 6,000 feet on the 

 latter in July ; C. nivigena, allied to it, on the steppes near 

 Odessa, which have both finely reticulated coats like C. ver- 

 nus, attached at the base instead of the brow of the bulb, and 

 differing in other respects ; and lastly, C. nubigena, from the 

 summit of Gargarus, (wdth a hard smooth coat, and at the 

 base a ciliated ring, as in C. pulchellus) closely allied to C. 

 Sibthorpianus of Cretan Ida, and seemingly to C. Isevigatus of 

 the summit of Milo and Thermia as well as Crete, which has 

 a hard coat, cut at the base into the appearance of scales. As 



