362 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



unopened flower to the head of a pehcan at rest. 

 Miers states that he had often seen it in Brazil, where 

 he w^as led to compare the large flaccid blossoms on 

 the bushes with coloured pocket-handkerchiefs laid 

 out to dry. Lunan remarks that the odour is so 

 abominably foetid tliat it is detested and shunned by 

 most animals ; and when hogs venture, through 

 necessity, to eat of it, it destroys them.^ Tussac, 

 noting the same plant in the Antilles, says that a 

 whole herd of swine, having been driven into the 

 woods where this plant was common, had entirely 

 perished from eating the roots and young stems. 

 Another species, which has now flowered two or 

 three times in this country {Aristolochia Goldicand), 

 comes from Old Calabar River and Sierra Leone.^ 

 The flowers reach to twenty-six inches in length 

 and eleven inches in diameter at the mouth, when 

 grown here. Like the other, it has a strong and 

 powerful odour as of putrid meat. Our figure of this 

 species is very considerably reduced, but it represents 

 the form, and from the measurements of its diameter 



' " Transactions Linnccean Society," xxv., p. 185, pi, 14. 



- " The largest flowers in the world, besides those belonging 

 to the CompositcB (the Mexican Helianfhns anniius), are pro- 

 duced by Rafflcsia Arnoldi, Aristolochia, Datura, Barringto7iia, 

 Cusiavia, Carolinca, Lccythis, Nympha:a, Nelunibium, Victoria 

 rcgia. Magnolia, Cactus, the Orchidecr, and the Liliaceous 

 forms." — Humboldt, " Views of Nature," p. 348. 



