38 On the Cultivation ofMonopsis Conspicua. 



country, but seldom seen a second season, for want of proper 

 cultivation and due attention in collecting its seeds. The 

 latter business is somewhat laborious, and requires a daily in- 

 spection of every branch. The first time I saw it was at Kew, 

 a great many years ago, when in company with Mr. Francis 

 Mas son, who had brought its seeds from the Cape of Good 

 Hope ; but the plant was then rotting with our Midsummer 

 rains. It had been in Kew garden, however, previous to this, 

 and was described by that learned botanist, Dr. Solander ; 

 who referred it to Lobelia, giving it the specific name of Specu- 

 lum, from the similarity of its blossoms to those of Campanula 

 Speculum, Linn, our Venus Looking-glass. After that, it was 

 a third time raised at Kew with greater success, as appears 

 by a most inimitable sketch of the whole plant in full per- 

 fection, by Mr. Francis Bauer, which is preserved in Sir 

 Joseph Banks's library. I cannot learn that it ever found 

 its way into any other collection than the Royal Garden, 

 til] last summer, when I first met with it in a garden at Hom- 

 erton, drooping under a north wall, with a parcel of seed- 

 ling Ixias, Gladioli, and other common Cape plants. The 

 owners setting no value on it, and indeed preferring cabbages 

 and cauliflowers to all such exotics as this, seeing me in rap- 

 tures with it, politely presented it to me ; and I afterwards 

 saw a few plants at Messrs. Colvill's, King's Road, Chelsea, 

 who also obligingly gave me one of theirs. 



Anxious to keep in the country, and preserve seeds of this 

 beautiful annual, I placed that from Homerton on some fresh 

 gravel in the middle of my court, which is fully exposed to 

 the south, and soon saw with joy several capsules swelling 

 with seeds. 



