May, 1850. FRUIT. EURYALE. GANGETIC ROSE. 255 



of 1851, were procured. The kind of cotton (which is 

 very short in the staple) employed, is now hardly grown, 

 and scarcely a loom exists which is fit for the finest fabrics. 

 The jewellers still excel in gold and silver filagree. 



Pine-apples, plantains, mangos, and oranges, abound in 

 the Dacca market, betokening a better climate for tropical 

 fruits than that of Western Bengal ; and we also saw the 

 fruit of Euryale ferox* which is round, soft, pulpy, and 

 the size of a small orange ; it contains from eight to fifteen 

 round black seeds as large as peas, which are full of flour, 

 and are eaten roasted in India and China, in which latter 

 country the plant is said to have been in cultivation for 

 upwards of 3000 years. 



The native vegetation is very similar to that of the 

 Hoogly, except that the white rose is frequent here. The 

 fact of a plant of this genus being as common on the plains 

 of Bengal as a dog-rose is in England, and associated with 

 cocoa-nuts, palms, mangos, plantains, and banyans, has 

 never yet attracted the attention of botanists, though the 

 species was described by Roxburgh. As a geographical 

 fact it is of great importance, for the rose is usually con- 

 sidered a northern genus, and no kind but this inhabits a 

 damp hot tropical climate. Even in mountainous countries 

 situated near the equator, as in the Himalaya and Andes, 

 wild roses are very rare, and only found at great eleva- 

 tions, whilst they are unknown in the southern hemisphere. 

 It is curious that this rose, which is also a native of Birma 

 and the Indian Peninsula, does not in this latitude grow 



* An Indian water-lily with a small red flower, covered everywhere with 

 prickles, and so closely allied to Victoria regia as to be scarcely generically distin- 

 guishable from it. It grows in the eastern Sunderbunds, and also in Kashmir. 

 The discoverer of Victoria called the latter "Euryale A mazonica." These inter- 

 esting plants are growing side by side in the new Victoria house at Kew. The 

 Chinese species has been erroneously considered different from the Indian one. 



