160 JOURNAL OF THE. ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



hardy Cyclamen, " Being beaten and made up into trochisches 

 or little flat cakes, it is reported to be a good medicine to make 

 one in love." 



Species. — Coming now to the different species and varieties, 

 one is astounded at the fearful confusion of the names. Gerarde 

 in 1597 says, " There be divers sorts or kinds of Sowbreade, 

 differing very notably as well in forme or figure as in their time 

 of flowering, nourishing, fading, and appropriate vertues," and he 

 describes three sorts, to which in 1636 he adds two more. 

 Philip Miller in 1737 enumerates seven kinds ; and in a paper 

 read before our Society in 1878, Mr. Samuel Jennings, F.L.S., 

 after ably discussing the difficulty of finding any wholly satisfac- 

 tory basis on which the differentiation of the species can be safely 

 founded, concludes with these words, " For all practical purposes 

 the number of species may be reduced to six, viz. : (1) Coum ; 

 (2) ibericum (including Atkinsi) ; (3) vemum (syn. repandum) ; 

 (4) europceum ; (5) hedercefolium (with its geographical forms 

 africanum or macrophyllum, and grcemm or latifolium) ; 

 (6) persicum. Mr. Nicholson, in his " Dictionary of Gardening," 

 gives nine ; and that prince of modern botanists, Mr. J. G. 

 Baker, F.E.S., now admits ten species. But what strikes an in- 

 quirer most of all is how strangely, from first to last, the diffe- 

 rent names have been engaged in what I suppose we all of us as 

 children rejoiced in — I mean the game of " General Post " — for 

 no sooner do you find a name attributed to one species or variety 

 than it eludes your grasp by deftly slipping off to another ; 

 follow it, and perhaps you think you have it, but no, off he flies 

 and settles on a third ; follow again, and at last you feel sure you 

 must have tracked him down to earth, but not a bit of it, off he is 

 again, back to one of the two he had previously deserted ; then 

 off again to a fourth, backwards and forwards, " and so ad in- 

 finitum.' 7 In fact, every species seems to have passed under as 

 many different aliases as the most notorious thief in London. I 

 do, however, trust that Mr. Baker's latest classification, which I 

 humbly follow as my guide, has stopped for good and all these 

 playful antics of the names. 



Description. — I will now proceed to give a short description 

 of each of the species acknowledged by Mr. Baker, following the 

 order of his classification, and endeavouring at the same time to 

 note the most prominent points of difference between them, in 



