ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 347 



hot spring of Pezce near Groswardein, in Hungary) ; the species of 

 Nelumbo ; Euryale amazonica of Poppig ; and the Victoria Regina 

 discovered in 1837 by Sir Robert Schomburgk in the River Berbice 

 in British Guiana, and which is allied to the prickly Euryale, al- 

 though, according to Lindley, a very different genus. The round 

 leaves of this magnificent water plant are six feet in diameter, and 

 are surrounded by turned up margins 3 to 5 inches high, light green 

 inside, and bright crimson outside. The agreeably perfumed flowers, 

 twenty or thirty blossoms of which may be seen at the same time 

 within a small space, are white and rose colored, 15 inches in dia- 

 meter, and have many hundred petals. (Rob. Schomburgk, Reisen 

 in Guiana und am Orinoko, 1841, s. 233.) Poppig also gives to 

 the leaves of his Euryale amazonica which he found near Tefe, as 

 much as 5 feet 8 inches French, or 6 English feet, diameter. (Pop- 

 pig, Reise in Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstrome, bd. ii. 

 1836, s. 432.) If Euryale and Victoria are the genera which pre- 

 sent the greatest extension in all dimensions of the parenchyma of 

 the IcaveSj the greatest known dimensions of a, flower belong to a 

 parasitical Cytinea, the Rafflesia Arnoldi (R. Brown), discovered by 

 Dr. Arnold in Sumatra, in 1818 : it has a stemless flower of three 

 English feet diameter, surrounded by large leaf-like scales. Fungus- 

 like, it has an animal smell, resembling beef. 



( 25 ) p. 243. " LianeSj rope-plants, (' Busli ropes;' in Spanish, 

 Vejuccos"^) 



According to Kunth's division of the Bauhinieae, the true genus 

 Bauhinia belongs to the New Continent : the African Bauhinia, B. 

 rufescens (Lam.), is a Pauletia (Cav.), a genus of which we found 

 some new species in South America. So also the Banisterias, from 

 among the Malpighiaceas, are properly an American form ; although' 

 two species are natives of India, and one species, Banisteria leona, 

 described by Cavanilles, is a native of Western Africa. Within the 

 tropics and in the Southern Hemisphere, we find among the most 

 different families of plants the twining rope-like climbers which in 

 those regions render the forests at once so impenetrable to man, and 

 on the other hand so accessible and habitable to the QuadrumanaD 

 (or Monkeys), and to the Cercoleptes and the small tiger-cats. The 



