NAT. ORDER. MENISPERMACE^. 85 



officials of the Portuguese possessions on the East coast of Africa, 

 ever since the year 1811. Dr. Wallick, also, took much jiains for 

 effecting the same object, and sent to Governor Farquhar the 

 drawing made at Calcutta, of a male plant of the calumba-root, 

 which had been brought to the Botanic Garden there by Mr. 

 Berry. Copies of this drawing were distributed to the different 

 ships of war, and captains of merchant vessels, trading to the 

 eastern coast of Africa, that they might be enabled to distinguish 

 the plant, and bring it to the Mauritius, since there had evidently 

 been an unwillingness on the part of the Portuguese authorities 

 to permit this precious vegetable to be taken away in any other 

 state than what it bears in commerce, when deprived of vegetative 

 power, by passing through the oven. 



" All the attempts resulting from these ineans proved fruitless, 

 until Capt. William Fitzwilliam Owen, commanding the surveying 

 squadron of the British Navy, on the East African coast, under- 

 took the task. The extensive influence he had acquired by his 

 intercourse with the native chieftains and tribes, enabled him to 

 procure living plants, while his botanical knowledge secured him 

 against the mistakes committed by others, who had been misled by 

 the local settlers in their search, and imposed on by the substitution 

 of other species, instead of the true calumha-root. Capt. Owen, 

 in the year 1825, brought away, in the English ship-of-war Severn, 

 from Oibo, a great number of cases filled with growing roots, of 

 male and female plants, laid down in the sandy loam which ap- 

 pears to be their favorite soil. No time was lost by him in for- 

 v^arding a great portion of these to M. Telfair, at Mauritius, 

 planting some also at Mahe, an island in the Seychelles Archipel- 

 ago, and sending to Bombay several cases, in order to multiply by 

 dispersion, and the chances of success in naturalizing them in dif- 

 ferent climates." 



The roots that were brought to Mauritius were partly trans- 

 mitted to England, New Holland, and America ; but the greater 



