312 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
It became an absolute necessity to establish the identity of the 
two ladies. Did the Lady Bute of 1789, or some other lady in that 
year who was ultimately the Marchioness of Bute, introduce the 
flower ? That was an obstacle that caused no little difficulty, and 
horticultural literature failed to supply the solution. 
About this time a further discovery was made that seemed to 
complicate the question, although it helped in another direction. 
During some researches by me at the Natural History Museum, Dr. 
Rendle very kindly intimated that he had under his charge some 
old dried specimens of Dahlias that might be of service. 
If time and space permitted, it would be most interesting to say 
something about them, but the present inquiry must be limited as 
far as possible to the primary question of the first introduction of 
the Dahlia into England — the second introduction only slightly 
affects it, and as these dried specimens include a number of Dahlias 
originally grown at Holland House early in the nineteenth century, 
they must be passed over, excepting three of them, which were 
evidently comprised in Lady Bute's introduction. 
These three specimens were without doubt grown at Kew and 
thus found their way into Sir Joseph Banks' herbarium, of which 
they formed a part. They are the same as Cavanilles', they bear 
his names, and in one case the colour is described in Latin in 
Cavanilles' own words. 
Let us glance for a moment at these specimens of long ago. It is 
one of the unexplained mysteries connected with early Dahlia history 
that no writer has ever yet referred to them, and it must therefore be 
assumed that their existence was unknown, for if they had ever seen 
the light of day it would have settled once and for all what were the 
varieties included in the Bute introduction which everybody has so 
vaguely referred to, although they would in themselves still have left 
the date an open question. 
The first of them to be considered is peculiarly instructive for 
two reasons — firstly, because of the old inscription written on the 
sheet upon which the flower is mounted ; secondly, because the flower 
itself shows as clearly as Cavanilles' figure of it does, and as Thouin's 
figure does also, that it was a semi-double variety, notwithstanding 
that under English and German cultivation the blooms generally came 
absolutely single, and, as such, were figured by most of the early 
nineteenth-century authorities. This peculiarity, however, is another 
question apart from our present subject, and I only mention it because 
of the claim made on behalf of Hartweg (not Hartwig), of Karlsruhe, 
in connexion with the supposed raising of the Pompon Dahlia from 
D. coccinea. This specimen is D. pinnaia, otherwise known as pur- 
purea, the Georgina variabilis purpurea of Willdenow's " Hort. Berol." 
tab. xciii., and of his " Species Plantarum, " p. 2124, and of his" Enume- 
ratio Plantarum," p. 899. The inscription on the sheet is as follows : 
" Dahlia pinnata, Cav. Ic. p. 56 and 80. Sent under the name 
of Dahlia coeruleo-rubens. C. G. Ortega (Lady Bute)." This colour 
