230 
` groups of plants of great scientific interest, which, for various 
this reason it is hoped that it may be found not less useful than 
its predecessors. 
A few words may be said as to the history at Kew of the more 
important of the groups now catalogued, 
SCITAMINEJE, 
. An order eee gingers, pide pani, and musas. I 
numbers some 450 species, of which 240 are in cultivation at 
Kew. A dnd all are natives of pe tropics. About 40 species 
are given in 1813 in the second edition of Aiton’s Hortus 
Kewensis, and 139 by John Smith, Curator of the Royal Gardens, 
1841-63, in his privately printed Records of Kew (p. 222) as 
forming * the Kew collection between the years 1822 and 1864.” 
~ Musa Ensete, one of the most popular representatives of the 
family and a cons] enon ornament of the S us of Southern 
sent seeds from which plants ce raised, one o ' which was 
ultimately figured in the Botanical Magazine (tt. 5223, 524), 
Strelitzia Regine, a beautiful plant, which almost gena T 
preserves an unbroken descent at Kew, was named by Sir Joseph 
Banks in honour of Queen Charlotte, a daughter of the Take 
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, but of which, with characteristic 
modesty, he allowed the elder Aiton to publish the description. 
Banks had sp it to the Royal Gardens in 1773 from the 
Cape of Good Ho 
Strelitzia Au dal was introduced in 1791 by Francis Masson, 
the botanical collector for the Royal Gardens, where it has been 
cultivated ever since, It may have been named in spine tient 
to the Princess Augusta, mother of George III. 
The collection is dispersed, according to the habits of the plants 
and the different treatment they require, between the Palm 
House, No. L, the Stove (No. IX.), and the Water Lily House 
(No. XV.). A few are represented in the Temperate House. 
BROMELIACE A. 
The order of which the pine-apple is a familiar representative ; 
c species are mostly epiphytal on trees and exclusively natives 
the New World. According to Aiton's Hortus Kewensis, 
16 species had been introduced at Kew previous to 1813. In 1864 
Smith -— (Records p. 206) that the number amounted to 
arly 1 
nearly 
I dir II. to the Kew Report for sue a list of species 
cultivated at that time was given, numbering 147. The voe 
of the collection was much increased by the pahia in 1 386 o 
a large selection from that formed by the late Professor aM 
Morren, of Liége, which was at the time probably the richest in 
existence. The number of species comprised in the present list 
amounts to 252. 
Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., the present keeper of the Herbarium of 
the. e cya Gardens, based his invaluable Handbook of the 
