THE “LOTOS” OF THE ANCIENTS. 
263 
of the seed-vessel, which usually contains about thirty of these 
beans or seeds. The flower is twice the size of a poppy, of the 
colour of a full-blown rose, and elevated above the water ; 
about each flower are produced large leaves, of the size of a 
Thessalian hat, having the same kind of stem as the flower- 
stem. In each bean, when broken, may be seen the embryo 
plant, out of which the leaf grows. So much for the fruit. 
The root is thicker than the thickest reed, and cellular like the 
stem ; and those who live about the marshes eat it as food, 
either raw, or boiled, or roasted. These plants are produced 
spontaneously, but they are cultivated in beds. To make these 
bean-beds, the beans are sown in the mud, being previously 
mixed up carefully with chaff, so that they may remain without 
injury till they take root, after which the plant is safe. The 
root is strong, and not unlike that of the reed ; the stem is also 
Receptacle of Nelumbium speciosum, with the seeds in situ. 
similar, except that it is full of prickles, and therefore the 
crocodiles, which do not see very well, avoid the plant, for fear of 
running the prickles into their eyes.” 
Major Drury observes that the mode of sowing the seeds of 
Nelumbium in India, at the present day, is by first enclosing 
them in balls of clay, and then throwing them into the water. 
Sir James Smith says that in process of time the receptacle 
separates from the stalk, and, laden with ripe oval nuts, floats 
down the water. The nuts vegetating, it becomes a cornu- 
copoeia of young sprouting plants, which at length break loose 
from their confinement, and take root in the mud. 
The account given by Strabo of the Egyptian bean is not 
less interesting. “ In the marshes and lakes of Egypt grow 
both the paper-reed and the Egyptian bean, which produces a 
