Dr. WALKER-AnNorT on Samara læta, Linn. 363 
bd 
are the more necessary to be recollected, because M. Alphonse DeCandolle in . 
the * Prodromus, viii. p. 103, assumes it as a fact, that the Swartzian plant 
was from America, and therefore that it must be different from the Linnean 
one obtained from the East. 
Where Swartz saw the plant which he considered the S. læta of Linnzus is 
fortunately a point not very difficult to be conjectured. In the short sketch of 
the Life of Swartz published in Hooker's * Botanical Journal,' ii. p. 384, it is 
stated : * At length, in 1786, he returned to Kingston in Jamaica, where, out 
of attachment to his native land, he declined the honour that was offered to 
him of being appointed Botanist to His Britannic Majesty, and embarked for 
England on his way to Sweden. He remained for some time in London, 
profiting by the opportunity thus afforded him for examining the vast trea- 
sures ih the Banksian herbarium, and comparing the plants that he had 
himself brought home with this and other collections, and then in 1789 he 
returned to his own country." Iam however informed by Mr. Bennett, that 
*there is a letter from him to Sir Joseph Banks, dated Orfordness, 23rd 
July, 1787, when he was just on the point of soon losing sight of England; 
and another from Norrkoping in Sweden, dated 29th August, 1787." As the 
title-page of the * Prodromus' bears date 1788, it may be inferred that this 
work was printed immediately after his return to Sweden, and that the manu- 
script had been drawn up in the West Indies. Moreover, there is another 
letter from him to Sir Joseph Banks, written from Jamaica on 1st March, 
1786, so that it must have been between the summers of 1786 and 1787* that 
Swartz examined the Banksian collections, and there made the observations 
on S. læta, which he afterwards inserted in his ‘ Flora Indize Occidentalis. 
How far the plant so called, which is preserved in the Banksian herbarium, 
differs from the Linnean specimen, I shall notice presently. The marks given 
by Swartz in the * Flora Indiæ Occidentalis’ for distinguishing it from S. co- 
riacea, are strictly applicable to the specimens in the Banksian collection : 
* Abundance of documents no doubt exist in London to prove the exact period during which Swartz 
was so engaged, as also when the * Prodromus' was written, and the addenda and corrigenda made. I 
am unwilling to refer to memoranda of my own, or to hearsay evidence; the above is sufficient to esta- 
blish that Swartz must have seen the S. læta of the Banksian herbarium before he published the * Flora 
Indie Occidentalis.’ : 
