IN MEMORY OF MARIANNE NORTH. 666 



were hung with white lichen, and the latter weighed down with 

 cones as big as one's head. The smaller cones of the male trees 

 were shaking off clouds of golden pollen, and were full of small 

 grubs, which, I suppose, attracted the nights of parroquets I saw 

 so busily employed about them. These birds are said to be so 

 clever that they can find a soft place in the great shells of the cone 

 when ripe, into which they get the point of their sharp beak, and 

 fidget it until the whole cracks, and the nuts fall to the ground. It 

 is a food they delight in, and men, too, when properly cooked, like 

 chestnuts. The most remarkable thing about the trees was the 

 bark, which was a perfect child's puzzle of knobby slabs of different 

 sizes, with five or six decided sides to each, and all fitted together 

 with the neatness of a honeycomb. I tried in vain to find some 

 system on which it was arranged. The great heads, before the 

 flowers come out, are wrapped up in covers of white kid tinted with 

 salmon, getting darker as they fall aside and the lemon buds push 

 themselves out, and the first flowers which open round the base of 

 the spikelet, near the stalk, are of the purest turquoise-blue ; the 

 new rosette which replaces them is darker, metallic blue, and then 

 all the others seem to get more and more green and faded the 

 farther they get from the stalk, with a background of brown bracts 

 or leaves, the original white kid covers." 



On her return from South America in 1885, Miss North at once 

 commenced hanging the new paintings, which, including those from 

 South Africa and the Seychelles, are some two hundred in number. 

 Among the latter was the " Capucin," an imperfectly known 

 sapotaceous tree, which had been referred by Prof. Hartog to 

 Mimusops. The drawing of the foliage and fruit brought by Miss 

 North, with the flowers, which were subsequently sent at her 

 request, enabled Sir Joseph Hooker to determine the tree to be a 

 new genus, which he appropriately named (Ic. PI. 1473) Northea, 

 in honour of the artist. Miss North is also commemorated in 

 Crinum Northianum Baker and Nepenthes Norihiana Hook, f., the 

 former of which was described from her drawings, — the highest 

 compliment which could be paid to their scientific accuracy. 



In 188G the Government printed a new catalogue, including the 

 above additions, and withdrew the large number of unsold copies 

 of the third edition ; they also returned the cheque which Miss 

 North had actually tendered to buy up the whole stock of this now 

 obsolete catalogue. 



It may be interesting to add here some statistics of the contents 

 of the gallery. Out of about 200 natural orders of flowering plants, 

 as limited in Bentham and Hooker's ' Genera Plantarum,' 146 are 

 represented in this collection of paintings, and the plants depicted 

 belong to no fewer than 727 different genera. With regard to 

 species, the number actually named is under 900 ; but as specific 

 names have only been given to such as could be identified with ease 

 Of without too great an expenditure of time, this number is con- 

 siderably below the total number painted. They arc included in 

 848 paintings ; and when we know that they were all painted 

 between 1872 and 1883, and that they by no means represent all 



