VICTORIA REGIA; 
THE AMERICAN WATER LILY. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Tue great interest manifested by the public to know somewhat of this Lily has induced me to prepare this treatise. The Victoria Regia is found 
distributed north and south of the Amazon, in the bays and still waters of the river and its tributaries, in many of the lakes or ponds of Tropical America, 
the Berbice River, and various localities of that section of the continent. 
A plant so remarkable, for the rapidity of its growth, the leaves often expanding eight inches in diameter daily ; instances under my own observation 
having occurred wherein they have increased, between sunrise and sunset, half an inch hourly,—for the beauty and wonderful construction of these leaves, 
—for the ever-blooming property of the plant,—for the seeming identity, at the first, of each blossom, yet in reality varying so much as to require a con- 
stant vigilance to detect every distinct characteristic ;—these and other considerations seemed to justify a careful and familiar description, accompanied by 
such appropriate illustrations as I have been able to procure. 
WHEN DISCOVERED 
This plant was discovered about fifty-one years ago, by the botanist Hanxn, who was sent by the cpanel Government, in the year 1801, to investigate 
the vegetable productions of Peru, and the fruits of whose labors have been lost to science. 
M. A. D’Orbigny says: “When I was travelling in Central America, in the country of the wild Guarayas, who are a tribe of Guaranis or Caribs, I made 
acquaintance with Father La Cueva, a Spanish missionary, a good and well-informed man, beloved for his patriarchal virtues, and who had long and earnestly 
devoted himself to the conversion of the natives. The traveller who, after spending a year among Indians, meets with a fellow-creature capable of under- 
standing and exchanging sentiments with him, can easily appreciate the delight and eagerness with which I conversed with this venerable old man, thirty 
years of whose life had been passed among savages.” In one of these interviews, he mentioned that, with Henke, he was in a canoe on the Rio Mamore, 
one of the great tributaries of the River Amazon, when they discovered in the marshes, by the side of the stream, a flower so extraordinary that Henke 
fell on his knees in a transport of admiration. 
This fact was not made known till nearly forty years afterwards, and it is not a little remarkable that so strange a plant, now known to abound in the 
still, quiet nooks of most of the rivers in Tropical America, east of the Andes, should not have been noticed by ordinary travellers, in such a manner as to 
make it recognizable by the reader; and “yet it is without any exception, if we take it as a whole,—leayes, flowers, size, color, and graceful position in the 
water, especially when viewed with the usual accompaniments of Tropical American aquatic scenery,—the most beautiful plant known to Europeans.” 
M. Bonpxanp, the fellow-laborer of i:umboldt, is the next who had the pleasure of beholding this plant. M. Bonpland says: “In the year 1820, I 
found near the town of Corrientes, and not far from the forks of the Parana and the River Paraguay, a magnificent aquatic plant, known to the natives by 
the name of Corn or Wheat, of the Water.” (Mayz de l' Agua, maize of the water, is so called because it bears fruit filled with seeds which is substituted 
for grains of maize, and the flour from which is of superior whiteness.) In 1835, he sent seeds to the Garden of Plants, at Paris. “Tn 1849, when at Rio 
Pardo,” he further says, “I was surprised to sce all the ladies equipped with fans, with correct miniature drawings of this Nymphwa, which I described 
twenty-nine years before.” The farina made from the seed is preferred to that from the finest wheat, and the ladies of Corrientes, when the fruits are ripe, 
obtain the seeds and extract the flour; with this they make pastry, etc., and it is considered a luxury to have cakes of the farina of the Victoria Regia. 
The next gatherer of this lily is M. D’Orsrany, who, in 1828, sent specimens to the Natural History Society of Paris, gathered in the Province of Cor- 
rientes, on a river tributary to the Rio de la Plata. “If” says M. D’Orbigny, “there exist in the animal kingdom creatures whose size, compared with our 
Own, commands admiration, if we also gaze with wonder on the giants of the vegetable kingdom, we may well feel an especial pleasure in surveying any 
peculiarly remarkable species among those genera of plants which we had hitherto known of only moderate dimensions.” 
For eight months he had been investigating that Province, when, on descending the River Parana, and more than nine hundred miles from its junction 
with the Rio Platte, haying in his company two Guarani Indians only, he observed that the marshes on cither side the river were bordered with a green and 
floating surface; the Indians said it was a plant called “Yrupe, literally water-platter. Nearly a mile of water was overspread with huge, round, and 
