THE LACE-LEAF PLANT. 101 



of the kind more attractive and beautiful than a full-grown 

 specimen of this plant, with its dark-green leaves forming 

 the limit of a circle two or three feet in diameter, and in the 

 transparent water within that circle presenting leaves of every 

 stage of development, both as to colour and size." The flower 

 is a curious forked tuft, pink in colour, and rises above the 

 surface of the water during the fructification. The ouvirandra 

 grows in the streams along the eastern coast, but it is also 

 found abundantly in the colder interior provinces in running 

 water not many miles west of the capital. Mr. Ellis was the 

 first to bring plants of the lace-leaf to England, and from 

 these specimens have been obtained for the principal botanic 

 gardens of London and its neighbourhood. For a long time 

 this plant was supposed to be unique, but a few years ago 

 another species was discovered in West Africa by a French 

 botanist, and a third has since been found in Senegal, but 

 these are said to be much less singular in appearance, the 

 spaces which are open in the Madagascar species being 

 partially or entirely filled up in the African ones. 



The facts now given will be sufficient to show that Mada- 

 gascar is a country of great interest to the botanist as well as 

 to the zoologist ; and it may be hoped that many more years 

 will not elapse before its still unexplored vegetable riches 

 shall have been thoroughly investigated by scientific travellers. 

 There are probably many wonders and beauties of vegetable 

 life still awaiting discovery, and yet hidden in the depths 

 of those vast forests which form a green girdle round the 

 island. 



