46 On the Cultivation of the Polianthes Tuberosa. 



basi 2-fida, apice emarginatse, 2-loculares, 4-valves, versus 

 faciem dehiseentes ; post anthesin apice recurvulae et 

 parum incumbentes. Pollen rlavum. Stylus albus, longi- 

 tudine tubi, linearis, 3-angulus, glaber. Stigma album, 

 5-lobum lobis recurvo-horizontalibus ovalibus emarginatis, 

 intus praecipue ad marginem viscido-pubescentibus. 



The first account that I find of the Tuberose, is in 

 L'Ecluse's History of Plants, where it appears that on the 

 1st of December, 1594, he received a specimen of it, in very 

 bad condition, from Bernard Paludanus, a Physician 

 at Rome, to whom it was sent by the celebrated Simon de 

 Tovar, of Seville. It certainly had not then been many 

 years in Europe, and Linn^us in his Hortus Cliffortianus, 

 on this head refers us to Plumper's Genera Plantarum, p. 

 35, who says it was first brought by Pat her Minuti, from 

 the East Indies, into the senator Peiresc's garden at Bois- 

 gencier, near Toulon. It is much more probable, however, 

 that it was introduced at an earlier period, and from Ame- 

 rica, for no author describes it as wild in the East Indies ; 

 Loureiro only found it cultivated in the gardens of Cochin 

 China, and Rumph says it was unknown in the Island of 

 Amboina, till the Dutch carried it there from Batavia, in 

 1674. On the contrary, Kamel informs us, that it was 

 brought to the Island of Luzone, by the Spaniards, from 

 Mexico : and Parkinson, in 1656, tells us, that the plants, 

 which he describes as two species, " both grow naturally in 

 the West Indies, from whence being first brought into Spain, 

 have from thence been dispersed unto divers lovers of plants." 

 fhe senator Peiresc, as may be learnt from Gassendi, 

 was only fourteen years old in 1594, when Simon de Tovar 



