420 Account and Description of Spring Crocuses, §c. 



The whole have blossomed in much splendour in the spring 

 months of each year since their removal, and at those times 

 I made such notes and descriptions of them, as with the 

 corrections of the past season have enabled me to lay this 

 communication before the Society. 



The different species of Crocus appear not to have at- 

 tracted the attention of scientific Botanists until a very recent 

 period ; Linn^us, in his Hortus ClifFortianus (page 18) pub- 

 lished in 1737, separated the Autumnal and Spring Crocuses, 

 but both in the first (1753) and in the last (1762) editions of 

 his Species Plantarum* he made the Autumnal or Saffron 

 Crocus, and the Spring Crocus, varieties (under the names of 

 C. Officinalis and C. Vernus) of his sole species the C. Sativus. 

 To the latter variety he referred all the Spring Crocuses 

 with broad leaves, including the yellow flowering ones, enu- 

 merated -f by Caspar Bauhin in the two first classes of Spring 

 Crocuses of his Pinax, and as he could not have been ignorant 

 of the different kinds which were cultivated in gardens, and in 

 those of Holland especially, there can be no doubt that it was 

 his intention to consider them all as belonging to his C. Ver- 

 nus. It is singular, however, that Linn^us makes no refer- 

 ence to Caspar Bauhin's third class of Spring Crocuses, viz, 

 those with narrow leaves. 



The only alteration made by Willdenow, in his edition 

 (1797) of the Species Plantarum, \ in the previous arrange- 

 ment of LiNNiEus, was the separation of the two varieties 

 above named into distinct species, the Autumnal one being 



* Lixx. Species Plantarum, Edit. 1. vol. i. page 36 ; Edit. 2. vol. i. page 50. 



f Bauhin, Pinax, page 65, et seq. 



\ Willd, Species Plantarum, vol. i. page 194. 



