CENOTHERA MISSOURIENSIS. LARGE-FRUITED PRIMROSE. I 59 



of our earlier botanists, as it shows how the good poet has to 

 observe as closely, perhaps, as the botanist. He says : 



" I love, at such an hour, to mark. 



Their beauty greet the light breeze chill, 

 And shine 'mid shadows gathering dark. 

 The garden's glory still." 



Pursh, when writing of an allied species, remarked that in the 

 darkest night the flowers could always be plainly seen, but that 

 they appeared white then instead of yellow, and he thought it 

 might be owing to some phosphorescent property in the petals. 



Again, we may give an instance of the correspondence be- 

 tween poetical observation and the observations of botanists, in 

 a passage from Keats, another celebrated English poet : 



" A tuft of evening primroses, 

 O'er which the wind may hover till it dozes; 

 O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, 

 But that it is ever startled by the leap 

 Of buds into ripe flowers." 



And this immediate starting of buds into ripe flowers has been 

 noticed especially in our species, one observer having heard the 

 opening of the blossoms, so suddenly do they expand. Pursh 

 tells us that in his observations this opening generally occurred 

 about five o'clock in the evening. 



In looking into its botanical history there seems to have been 

 some ill feeling among the early botanists about the original 

 naming of the plant, and the result is that different authors have 

 different names for it. The first published description is by 

 Sims, in the "Botanical Magazine," for 1814. A flower was sent 

 to him from a plant growing in Mr. Nuttall's garden near Liver- 

 pool, by whom it was found in the neighborhood of the Missouri 

 in North America, and on this he named it CEnothcra Missoiiri- 

 ensis. Pursh about this time was in London preparing for his 

 " Flora of North America," and had permitted Sims to examine 

 his manuscript, in which this species was described as Qinothera 

 macrocarpa. Sims supposed his plant different from the one in 

 Pursh's herbarium. Pursh's work appeared very soon afterwards 



