234 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tendering my best thanks. This pitcher is by far the finest ot 

 the species that has yet been produced under cultivation. I will 

 quote in part Mr. St. John's descriptions : — " All the species are 

 more or less abundant. Bajah (Fig. 44, see p. 228) is a 

 dwarf plant rarely more than four feet high : its large pitchers 

 rest on the ground in a circle. One splendid specimen was found 

 to hold four pints, and in another was found a drowned rat ; the 

 pitchers become a deep violet purple with age. Edwarclsiana is 

 a twining plant ; the stem of one on being measured was found to 

 be 20 feet long, and one of its bright brick-red pitchers measured 

 2H inches in length. Lowii (Fig. 45) is easily distinguished 

 from all the rest by its strikingly curious shape, and by the absence 

 of a dilated ring round the aperture : it is bright pea-green outside 

 and mahogany red inside. Villosa occurs higher up the mountain 

 than any of the others : it has a downy peach skin with a good 

 deal of crimson on it, and a strongly lamellated flesh-coloured 

 ring.* 



Another attempt to get these Nepenthes was carefully planned 

 and pluckily made in December, 1877, by Mr. F. W. Burbidge 

 and Mr. P. C. M. Veitch, and repeated eight months later by the 

 first-named naturalist, but with scarcely any better success than 

 attended Sir Hugh Low and Mr. St. John. Seeds of Rajah 

 were indeed sent home to my firm and some of them germinated, 

 but very few indeed of the seedlings have lived. It seems 

 that as the conditions of climate and environment under which 

 these species live are difficult to imitate, even approxi- 

 mately, the means for their successful culture have yet to be 

 arrived at. 



A great impulse was given to the cultivation of Nepenthes 

 and other insectivorous plants by the Presidential address of 

 Sir Joseph Hooker before the Biological Section of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science at Belfast in 1874. 

 Not long previously the same eminent botanist had compiled the 

 monograph of Nepenthes for De Candolle's " Prodromus," still 

 the standard for reference, and which proved to be of especial 

 value at that time as a guide to searching for the unintroduced 

 species known to science. In 1872 there were ten species of 

 Nepenthes in cultivation, and four hybrids all raised in our 

 nursery which are enumerated and described by Dr. Masters in 

 * "Life in the Forests of the Far East," Vol. II. 



