6 VICTORIA REGIA; 
curiously-margined leaves, among which glittered, here and there, the magnificent white and pink flowers, scenting the air with their delicious fragrance.” 
The flowers are over a foot across; are, on opening, white, and change to pink, or rose, or purple, with a perfume like the pine apple. The fruit is half as 
large, when ripe, as the human head, and full of roundish, farinaceous seeds. 
Dr. Poprie is the next traveller who met with it, during a residence in Chili, Peru, &c., from 1827 to 1832. While descending the Amazon River, he 
beheld some aquatic plants, whose almost fabulous dimensions entitled them to vie with the celebrated Rafflesia, of India, while they far excelled that mar- 
vellous production in beauty and inflorescence. He speaks of it as Huryale Amazonica. As the Victoria Regia has been proved perennial, and the Euryale 
annual, the name is unquestionably inappropriate. 
After a period of five years, Sir R. H. Scuompurck discovered this plant in British Guiana, and its introduction into cultivation in England, on the 
continent, and this country, is owing to his efforts. Not knowing of his predecessors’ discoveries in other rivers, he addressed a letter to England, giving an 
account of its discovery. Five years later, in 1842, Sir Robert again detected the plant in Rupununi, an affluent of the Essequibo. “In my rambles 
through the West Indian Archipelago,” he says, “I had frequently met the white water lily; but the remark of an eminent botanist, that these floating plants 
were entirely unknown on the continent of South América, did not make me expect to find a representative of that tribe, which, for the superior grandeur 
of its leaves, the beauty of its flowers, and its fragrance, may be classed amongst the grandest productions of the vegetable world. It was on the first day 
of January this year, while contending with the difficulties nature opposed in different forms to our progress up the River Berbice, in British Guiana, that 
we arrived at a point where the river expanded and formed a currentless basin. Some object on the southern extremity of this basin attracted my attention. 
It was impossible to form any idea what it could be, and, animating the crew to increase the rate of their paddling, shortly afterwards we were opposite the 
object which had raised my curiosity. A vegetable wonder! All calamities were forgotten. I felt as botanist, and felt myself rewarded. A gigantic leaf, 
from five to six feet in diameter, salver-shaped, with a broad rim of light green above, and a vivid crimson below, resting upon the water. Quite in charae- 
ter with the wonderful leaf was the luxuriant flower, consisting of many hundred petals, passing in alternate tints from pure white to rose and pink. The 
smooth water was covered with them, and I rowed from one to the other and observed always something new to admire. The leaf on its surface is of a 
bright green, in form almost orbiculate, with this exception opposite its axis, where it is slightly bent up. Its diameter measured from five to six feet; 
around the whole margin extended a rim about three to five inches high, on the inside light green, like the surface of the leaf; on the outside, like the leaf’s 
lower part, of a bright crimson. The ribs are very prominent, almost an inch high, radiate from a common centre, and consist of eight principal ones, with 
a great many others branching off from them. These are crossed again by a raised membrane, or bands at right angles, which gives the whole the appear- 
ance of a spider’s web, and are beset with prickles; the veins contain air-cells, like the petiole and flower stem. The divisions of the ribs and bands are 
visible on the upper surface of the leaf, by which it appears areolated. The young leaf is convolute, and expands but slowly; the prickly stem ascends 
with the young leaf till it has reached the surface; by the time it is developed, its own weight depresses the stem, and it floats now on the water. The stem 
of the flower is an inch thick near the calyx, and is studded with sharp elastic prickles, about three quarters of an inch in length. The calyx is four-leaved, 
each upwards of seven inches in length and three inches in breadth; at the base they are thick, white inside, reddish brown and prickly outside. The 
diameter of the calyx is twelve to twenty-three inches; on it rests the magnificent flower, which, when fully developed, covers completely the calyx with its 
hundred petals. When it first opens it is white, with pink in the middle, which spreads over the whole flower the more it advances in age, and it is generally 
found the next day of pink color. As if to enhance its beauty, it is sweet scented. The petals next to the leaves of the calyx are fleshy, and possess air- 
cells, which certainly must contribute to the buoyancy of the flower. The seeds of the many-celled fruit are numerous, and imbedded in a spongy substance. 
We met them hereafter frequently, and the higher we advanced the more gigantic they became. We measured a leaf which was six feet and five inches in 
diameter, its rim five and a half inches high, and the flower across, fifteen inches.” 
Tn 1845, Mr. Brivass discovered the Victoria in Bolivia. “On one occasion,” he says, “I had the good fortune, while riding along the wooded banks 
of the Yacuma, a tributary of the Mamora, to arrive suddenly at a beautiful pond, or rather small lake, embosomed in the forest, when, to my delight and 
surprise, I descried, for the first time, the Queen of Aquatics, Victoria Regia! There were at least fifty flowers in view. They grow in four to six feet of 
water; each plant generally sends but four or five leaves to the surface, yet these cover the water in those parts where the plant abounds, touching one 
another so closely that I observed a beautiful aquatic bird walking with perfect ease from leaf to leaf.” 
Since 1845, it has been met with several times by travellers. Previous to that year, all who had met with this plant had come upon it unex- 
pectedly. 
Tn 1849, Mr. Spruce, a zealous naturalist, made a successful voyage up the Amazon in pursuit of it, and from Para, in November of that year, he sent 
flowers and leaves, preserved in spirits, to England. Having been told that a plant, answering to the description of the Victoria Regia, was growing in a 
lake on the largest island, at the junction of the rivers Amazon and Tapayoz, he planned an excursion in search of it. After arriving at the island, the 
ground was found covered with rank grass and rushes to the depth of six feet, and quite impassable. A little further down, in a small tide river communi- 
cating with the lake, which he was attempting to reach by this stream, was discovered the plant itself. Wading into the water, leaves and flowers were thus 
secured. The largest leaves measured little more than four feet across, but he was told they were much larger in winter, yet they were growing as close as 
they could lie, in about two feet of water. During the rainy season, the river would be much higher, the surface wider, and the plant doubtless would 
expand. Mr. Spruce says: “The aspect presented by the Victoria, in its native waters, is so novel and extraordinary that I am at a loss to what to liken it. 
The similitude is not a poetical one, but assuredly the impression the plant gave me, when viewed from the bank above, was that of a number of green tea- 
trays floating, with here and there a bouquet protruding between them; but, when more closely surveyed, the leaves excited the utmost admiration from 
their immensity and perfect symmetry. A leaf, turned up, suggests some strange fabric of cast iron, just taken from the furnace,—its ruddy color, and the 
enormous ribs with which it is strengthened increasing the similarity.” 
