ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 177 



This vital heat disappeared at night, but was not prevented 

 by placing the plants in the dark during the day-time. 



A yet more striking physiognomic contrast than that 

 of Casuarinese, Needle trees, and the almost leafless Peru- 

 vian Colletias, with Aroidese, is presented by the compa- 

 rison of those types of the greatest contraction of the leafy 

 organs with the Nymphseaceae and Nelumbonese. We find 

 in these as in the Aroidese, leaves, in which the cellular 

 tissue forming their surface is extended to an extreme degree, 

 supported on long fleshy succulent leaf-stnlks ; as in Nym- 

 phsea alba ; N. lutea ; N. thermalis (once called N. lotus, 

 from the hot spring of Pezce near Groswardein, in Hungary) ; 

 the species of Nelumbo; Euryale amazonica of Poppig; 

 and the Victoria Regiua discovered in 1837 by Sir Robert 

 Schomburgk in the Eiver Berbice in British Guiana, and 

 which is allied to the prickly Euryale, although, according 

 to Lindley, a very different genus. The round leaves of 

 this magnificent water plant are six feet in diameter, and 

 are surrounded by turned up margins 3 to 5 inches high, 

 light green inside, and bright crimson outside. The agree- 

 ably perfumed flowers, twenty or thirty blossoms of which 

 may be seen at the same time within a small space, are 

 white and rose coloured, 15 inches in diameter, and have 

 many hundred petals. (Bob. Schomburgk, Eeisen in Guiana 

 und am Orinoko, 1841, S. 233.) Poppig also gives to the 

 leaves of his Euryale amazonica which he found near Tefe, 

 as much as 5 feet 8 inches French, or 6 English feet, 

 diameter. (Poppig, Eeise in Chile, Peru und auf dem 

 Amazonenstrome, Bd. ii. 1836, S. 432.) If Euryale and 



VOL. II. v 



