THE PALMS OF BRITISH INDIA AND CEYLON. 349 



Sir Joseph Hooker calls his attempt at diagnosing the Indian 

 species of Phoenix tentative and says that it awaits much further 

 knowledge of the living plants before it can be accepted as trust- 

 worthy. The same applies to the African species whose classifica- 

 tion and distribution is still subject to discussion in spite of the 

 investigations of Schweinfurth, Beccari, Engler, and Drude. 1 



Cultivation in Europe. — All the species are stove or green- 

 house palms ; they are readily raised from imported seeds, sown in 

 sandy soil, in a mild hotbed. When the seedlings have reached a 

 sufficient size, they are potted off singly into small pots with the 

 same kind of soil in which the seeds were sown. Later on, good 

 turfy loam will be better. In the South of France, many of the 

 species are largely grown in the open air, to supply the demand 

 for well grown specimens for the decoration of apartments in Paris 

 and other places. The method adopted is this : " The plants are 

 taken up, the soil shaken from the roots, the palms packed in 

 bundles, and forwarded to Paris, where each one is firmly placed 

 in as small a pot as possible ; t\\ej are then plunged in a mild 

 hotbed in a warm house which is kept shaded and syringed until 

 new roots have formed, when shading is gradually removed, and 

 the plants hardened off. ■ By these means, much better specimens 

 are more rapidly and cheaply obtained than would be possible 

 under a system of pot-culture from the seedling stage onwards.'" 

 (Nich. Diet, of Gard.) 



1 Those who wish to get an insight into the difficulties of the Phoenix-question 

 care referred to the following authors : — 

 Martius, Historia Naturalis Palmarum, vol. III. 

 Jacquin, Fragmenta botanica 1809, p. 27. 

 Kirk, On the Palms of Eastern Tropical Africa, in the Journal of the Linn. Soc, 



London IX (1865). 

 Schweinfurth, Im Herzen von Africa. 

 Beccari. Mitteilungen fiber die Colonia Eritrea, in " Verhandl. Ges. fur 



Erdkunde " (1892), p. 347. 

 Engler, Hochgebirgsflora des tropischen Africa in Berliner Akad., Physik. 



Abt. II. 153. 

 Beccarri, Malesia, vol. III. 3f off. 

 Drude, Die Palmenflora des tropischen Africa in Engler's Bot. Jahrb. vol. XXI 



(1895). 

 Drude, Paling (echte Palmen) in Nat. Pflanzenf. II. 3. 



