20 BRITISH WATER-LILIES. 



land. As a greenhouse plant, it flowers in the winter 

 and early spring months. 



It is a well-known fact in botanical geography, 

 that the vegetation of tropical regions far surpasses 

 in splendour the more modest forms of vegetable 

 life that are found in the cold and temperate regions 

 of our globe. This is, however, only a general rule; 

 and, like many general rules in natural science, has 

 its exceptions. In the case of marine Algae, and 

 other productions inhabiting the ocean, we find that 

 latitude has a very weak influence in varying their 

 form and appearance the briny element being of 

 much more equable temperature, throughout the 

 different regions, than the atmosphere and the 

 earth's surface. To some extent, this may likewise, 

 in some instances, hold good with respect to lacus- 

 trine vegetation, which, in our own country, assumes 

 a comparatively luxuriant aspect; but, on the other 

 hand, we find that those tropical aquatics and semi- 

 aquatics, whose habitats are on the margins of rivers 

 and in shallow waters, often assume a luxuriance and 

 splendour scarcely to be met w T ith in other tribes, 

 and such is especially the case with the magnificent 

 family of Water-Lilies, some of which have, ever 

 since the earliest days of botanical science, been uni- 

 versally acknowledged to be the most splendid of 

 plants. 



We accordingly find that the Water-Lilies of our 

 own land are not so brilliantly adorned as the species 



