By Joseph Sabine, Esq. 



Ill 



viously observing, that it would be very singular, should it 

 hereafter appear, that the same plant which grows in North 

 America, high above the tropic, is also a native of regions 

 immediately under the equinoctial line, without having inter- 

 mediate habitats, to connect positions so remote. At pre- 

 sent we have neither plants, nor specimens, from any Ame- 

 rican country, south of the tropic of Cancer, to shew such 

 connection. 



The supposed Peruvian habitat is given on the authority 

 of Monardus, and others, who, about the end of the sixteenth 

 century, described a fruit (of a species of Passiflora) found 

 by the Spaniards, in the kingdom of Quito, called by the 

 natives, Maracot, which, from certain internal and external 

 resemblances to the Pomegranate, or Granada, they named 

 the Granadilla, or little Pomegranate. Early in the seven- 

 teenth century, a plant existed in the gardens of Italy, 

 which was supposed to be this Granadilla, and which 

 was called by the devout Italians, Fior del Passione, or 

 Flos Passionis (hence Passiflora,) because they imagined, 

 that parts of the flower and leaf represented the instruments 

 of the passion of our Saviour. Imperfect figures, and 

 defective descriptions, of this plant were published early 

 in and during the seventeenth century, from which 

 nothing more can be ascertained, than that the Passiflora, 

 which they possessed, had three-lobed leaves, and that 

 it bore a yellow fruit. To the authors of these descrip- 

 tions, which agree, as far as they go, with the Virginian 

 plant, Linn^us refers his P. incarnata. The plant itself, 

 unless it be the Virginian one, may have been long lost 

 to the gardens of Europe. The above descriptions, as 



