KOYAL WATER-LILY. 39 



hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the 

 flowers of nature." 



To resume M. D'Orbigny's remarks: "It was 

 some months after this interview with Father La 

 Cueva, that I was investigating the province of 

 Moxos, the only means of travelling from one part of 

 which to another is by water j and while I was go- 

 ing up the Rio de Madeiras, towards the source of 

 the Mamore, and often thinking over in my mind 

 the anecdote which the good old man had related to 

 me, I beheld in an immense lake of stagnant water, 

 which had a communication with the river, a plant 

 of such extraordinary aspect, that I instantly con- 

 cluded it must be the same as Hsenke had seen. I 

 also perceived that it was allied to the Water-maize, 

 already mentioned as found at Corrientes. Great 

 was my delight to find that this gigantic vegetable, 

 though of the same genus, still differed specifically 

 from that which I had seen before. The under side 

 of the foliage and the crimson sepals were quite pe- 

 culiar. Like Haenke, I made a perfect harvest of 

 leaves and flowers; but subsequent illness, caused 

 by alternate exposure to the blazing sun and drench- 

 ing rains of these flooded plains, brought on such 

 languor and exhaustion, that I lost my specimens of 

 this second species, and was thus deprived of the 

 satisfaction of carrying the plant to Europe. The 

 honour of naming the original and first found plant 

 has been forestalled by Dr Lindley, who calls it Vic- 



