390 THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 
Victoria regia in the size of its leaves, with an insignificant 
flower. The Victoria regia, as we have seen in an earlier 
chapter, produces leaves six feet and a half in diameter, and 
flowers fifteen inches across. These inhabit the cool translucent 
lake-like rivers of Demerara, as illustrated in Plate V. The 
NupHArDE# have calyx and petals both distinct. The species are 
about twenty. The Blue Water Lily (JV. caerulea), the sacred 
plant of the ancient Egyptian, is very fragrant. N. edulis con- 
tains abundance of starch in its root, and is an article of diet in 
India. XN. lotus, the Egyptian Lotus, grows in slow running 
streams, and in the rice-fields, in Egypt. It has large white flowers, 
with sepals, red at the margins; the seeds and roots were dried 
and made into bread by the ancient Egyptians. In WW. alba, the 
common White Water Lily of our ponds and ditches, the flowers, 
according to Linnzus, open in the morning about seven o’clock 
and close again on the approach of evening. The leaves of Water 
Lilies are large, succulent, and floating, the sepals and petals 
numerous, imbricated, and passing gradually into each other, with 
persistent sepals. The leaf is a rounded ovate, usually purplish 
beneath, the lobes at the base almost parallel, and the leaf stalk 
cylindrical. In Nupfars, on the contrary, they are ovate, pointed, 
the basal leaves slightly divergent, and the leaf stalk angular, 
especially on the upper part. 
The Netumpiace®, or Water-beans, are natives of stagnant 
_ waters in the temperate and tropical regions of both hemispheres ; 
chiefly remarkable for the beauty of their flowers. The fruit 
of Nelumbrum: speciosum is supposed to have been the Egyptian 
Bean of Pythagoras, and the flower that mythic lotus so common 
_ the monuments of Egypt and India. 
RANUNCULACE®. 
Hypogynous exogens, flowers monodichlamydeous, placente 
sutural or axile, embryo minute, enclosed in copious fleshy oF 
horny albumen. 119 genera, 1,703 species. 
ine exogenous trees or shrubs, flowers solitary, — odoriferous. | 
