tion is the fine Melastomaceous shrub 



Mcdimlla magnified, fre- 



quently seen in bloom in our conservatc 



ry, discovered by Thomas 



Lobb, who, unlike most other collec 



ors of living plants, pre- 



served a small number of dried specim 



ens. 



In the meantime the subject had e 



ntered upon a new phase. 



Besides Kamel many members of the v 



arious religious orders had 



written treatises, some nominally bota 



nical, all really medicinal. 



Few of these were ever printed, and so 



me of them are lost. The 



authors whose names are on record 



are Frs. Bias, Valencia, 



Alsina, Clain, Sta. Maria, Cacho, Vise 



, Gomez, Belby, Saldada, 



Ferrero, Delgado, and Mercado. The 



works of the last two are 



much the most important, yet they re 



mained in manuscript 150 



and 200 years respectively, and have 



only been printed in the 



But the appearance, in 1837, of Blanco's Flora de Filipinas, 

 was of the utmost consequence. Manuel Blanco was born at 

 Navianos, Spain, in 1778, educated at Valladolid, and coming to 

 the Philippines in 1805, held several curacies near Manila, and 

 ultimately became provincial delegate, in which capacity he 

 traveled extensively in Luzon, Panay and Cebu. Impressed 

 from the first by the beauty and variety of the vegetation, he 

 began its study with very few books and no other aid of any 

 description. The result was the famous Flora, an octavo of 

 965 pages in which over 1,000 species are described, a few called 



identified with extra- Philippine plants, others considered to be new. 



difficulty of the task are taken into account, it must be confessed 

 that it is a wonderful piece of work. A second edition, issued 

 shortly after his death in 1845, was taken almost entirely from 

 his notes, and contained many additions. Many names of the 

 first edition were also changed, rarely with any intimation of the 

 fact, and as these involve not merely specific and generic but 

 even family differences, confusion has often resulted. 



Blanco seems further to have stirred many others into activity, 

 and plants were sent him by various persons throughout the 

 archipelago. Some also wrote short articles upon the subject, 



