Ml ■■V—-,-*'— ■- 



I • 



NYMPHiEA COERULEA; 



OR, 



BLUE EGYPTIAN WATER-LILY. 



In our Picturesque Plate, we have introduced a distant view of Aboukir, and the waters of the 

 Nile, where the Blue Lotos is found in great abundance, and which tends much to enliven the 

 scene. As the flood subsides, its tuberous roots afford a nourishment nearly resembling our 

 Potatoe, but more mealy. It has an exterior calyx, consisting of four green leaves, internally 

 coloured blue ; numerous corolla leaves, of the finest azure colour, a number of stamina, with 

 yellow filaments, tipt with blue anthers, and an orbicular pistillum, crowned with a stigma radiated 

 like our Poppy, and turning like it to a pericarp filled with innumerable small seeds. The leaves 

 not being crenated, as with the White Lotos (Nymphm Lotos), it more nearly corresponds 

 with our common White Lily. It comes under the Class Polyandria, Order Monogynia, 

 of Linnaeus. 



It was surely a most extraordinary sight, to observe the proud conqueror of Egypt presiding 

 over a literary association to promote science, and most attentively listening to, and applauding 

 a discourse read by Julius Ccesar Savigni,* on those sacred Nymph^as which embellish the 

 shores of Egypt; little then did his arrogant soul imagine, that at that time on the buoyant 

 wave was floating the thunder of the British arms, which Providence had destined to annihilate 

 his proud army, and take from it its famed standard impiously called ' Lnvincible' Little then 

 did HE dream, that a bloody+ diadem would soon encircle his brow, and that he would feel 

 never satiated with human honours, his mind becoming a dreadful prey to a cursed, a senseless, 

 and wicked ambition. 



TO THE BLUE LOTOS. 









CHILD OF THE SUN! why droops thy withering head, 



While high in Leo flames thy radiant sire ; 



With Egypt's glory is thy glory fled, 



And with her genius quench'd thy native fire? — 



Far direr than her desert's burning wind, 

 Gaul's furious legions sweep yon ravaged vale, 

 Death stalks before, grim famine howls behind, 

 And screams of horror load the tainted gale. 



* Such are the pompous appellations the French assumed, as their Christian names, and it was ridiculous enough for a pretended 

 republican to usurp the name of an usurper/ 



f The needless and atrocious murder of the Duke D'Enghien, by torch-light, in the Bois de Boulogne, appals every heart with horror! 



A Far 



