MISSION OF COLLECTOR TO BRAZIL. 49 



7 



Ang, Sth, — Mr. M. called this morning as appointed, and we 

 proceeded to Messrs. H. & R/s nursery. Mr. Rossiter kindly 

 promised to give me letters to some of his friends in St. Cathe- 

 rine's before I started for the South. He told me that only two 

 days ago he had attended the funeral of a collector, who had been 

 sent out by Linden, of Brussels. He had been in Brazil up\vards 

 of a year, the latter part of the time in St. Catherine s. Some 

 weeks ago he came to Rio with some plants, which he dispatched 

 for Europe, suffering, at the time, from a severe cold caught from 

 a whetting he had got before leaving St. Catherine's. Soon after 

 his arrival in Rio he was taken worse, and died last week. • 



Aug. ^ih, — Had the case [a case for the plants to be sent 

 home, which he had procured at Rio] conveyed to my lodgings, 

 and fitted an open false bottom into it, to guard against any 

 excess of moisture in the bottom o£ the case. When plants are 

 turned out of pots, with good balls, and with scarcely any loss of 

 roots, or when they are put into the case growing in pots, this 

 may not be necessary ; but where they are taken up from the 

 ground, with greater or less loss of their fibrous roots, I think it 

 a very wise precaution. 



Aug. 12^/i. — Started by morning train for Macacos, to go up 

 the Serra in search of more plants of No. 40 {Bertolonia mar- 

 garitacea), I went straight to the forest where I had formerly 

 seen it, and in a very short time came upon a spot almost covered 

 with it. The largest plant I saw was about two feet in height. 

 The stem of the plant is short-jointed and stiff; the leaves vary 

 a little in form, but are generally cordate-lanceolate (the largest 

 I have gathered measures 9^ by 5 inches) ; they are ribbed, like 

 those of most Melastomaceous plants, and are beautifully wrinkled; 

 their colour on the upper side is of a very dark shining green, 

 approaching crimson, sometimes with a bronzy tinge, and plenti- 

 fully studded with beautiful pearl-white spots arranged in some- 

 what broken rows between the ribs, and in tho same direction. 

 The under side is deep purple. The plant is not in flower, but 

 I collected a few specimens with old flower-stems and capsules 

 remaining. The stems are produced from the axils of the upper- 

 most leaves, and rise a few inches above them, each bearing on 

 its summit an irregular corymb of the three-cornered capsules* 



Nothing could exceed the beautiful appearance of the plants 

 growing so thickly together as I have seen them to-day. It 

 seemed as if the fairies had been there last night during a hail- 

 storm, and had amused themselves in arranging the newly-fallen 



VOL. *II. 



£ 



_Pi#^ 



