*• MADEIRA FLOWERS " 09 



out the whole year in such profusion that the eye can scarcely 

 bear to rest on its brilliant colour. The Portuguese make a bright 

 rose-coloured dye for articles of dress from the petals, and the 

 renowned feather- flowers made by the nuns at Santa Clara Con- 

 vent own (sic) much of their brilliancy to colours extracted from 

 this flower." We learn from R. T. Lowe (Bot. Mag. t. 3296) that 

 Mrs. Penfold imported seeds from Brazil in 1828, and that Cleome 

 dendroides, the subject of the plate, was raised from such seeds. 

 The drawing for this plate was by Miss M. Young, who con- 

 tributed many figures of Madeira plants to Hooker for Bot. Mag. 

 vol. Ixi. (1834) : she was a friend of Lowe (whose initials in this 

 volume are often wrongly given as " J! T."), who expresses warm 

 approval of her work, which is indeed of a far higher order than 

 that of either of the ladies now under consideration : he does not 

 mention either book in his Ifamcal Flora of Madeira. Mrs. Rob- 

 ley's book, which marked her "debut as an artist,*' contains eight plates, 

 th^ text of which I think was entirely supplied Ijy Mr. Garnons ; her 

 own shary in the volume is confined to a brief preface (dated March, 

 1815) of eight lines. The text contains nothing of interest; it is 

 noted that Htrelitzia (t. i.) was introduced into Madeira by Mrs. Pen- 

 fold, from whose plant have been propagated all that are in the 

 island. The plates show less artistic feeling than those in Mrs. Pen- 

 foLl's book : t. vii, representing Liliicni camlidum and two Amaryl- 

 lises, is very badly grouped. 



The books, copies of which are in the library of the Department of 

 Botan}^, are apparently somewhat rare : neither is in the British Museum 

 Catalogue and only the latter in that of Kew. Mrs. Robley's appears 

 to be the less known, as it does not appear in the bibliography appended 

 to the Flora do Archii^elago da Madeira of Senor C. A. de Menezes 

 (Funchal, 1914) in which Mrs. Penf old's is entered. 



James Brittet^. 



P.S. — Thinking that some of the foregoing information might 

 interest a wider circle than is reached by this Journal, I communi- 

 cated it to The Times Literary Supplement (March 6) : the note 

 there printed elicited one or two points of interest which may be 

 appended here. Mr. A. L. Soper, of Messrs. Lovell Reeve & Co., 

 tells me that both books appeared in the '* List of Scientific Works 

 published by Reeve Brothers " issued in 1846, and that the price of 

 each was a guinea. Mr. Gordon Wordsworth of The Stepping Stones, 

 Ambleside — a grandson of the poet — writes that he possesses a copy 

 of Madeira Flowers inscribed : " Wm. Wordsworth Esq'"^ from the 

 Author " ; he has no information as to Mrs. Penfold's relations with his 

 grandfather, so does not think they can have been intimate. Mrs. May^ 

 of Ridge Hill. Macclesfield, tells me that the Wallases were an old 

 Cumberland family settled near Penrith ; in the latter end of the 

 eighteenth century one of them went to Madeira and entered the 

 firm of Cossart, Gordon, & Co., and marriages took place between 

 the families. Mrs. Penfold's second (? maiden) name being Wallas 

 suggests that her request to Wordsworth may have been prompted by 

 the recollection of an early friendship between her people and his. 



