﻿wanting. Flowers from 4 to 10, upright, scentless; the lower ones 

 generally on the longest stalks. Petals egg-shaped, bluntish, 

 widely spreading, of a beautiful lightish blue colour, rarely vary- 

 ing to pink or white. Stamens thread-shaped, equal, shorter than 

 the petals, to the base of which they are slightly attached. Anthers 

 brownish. 



This elegant little plant, which has not, that I have heard, 

 been found wild in any part of Britain except in the locality above 

 mentioned, is said to be very common in the neighbourhood of 

 Paris. It is also a native of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria ; 

 and has been cultivated in our gardens, which it enlivens with its 

 beautiful blue flowers early in the Spring, ever since the time 

 of Gerarde, in 1597. — Rudueck§ has figured a variety of this 

 with 3 leaves, which he calls Hyacinthus stellaris trifolius ; and 

 another with white flowers, Hyacinthus stellaris albus. See his 

 Campii Elysii, v. ii. p. 33. figs. 2 & 3. The variety with 3 leaves 

 is not unfrequently met with in gardens ; the white-flowered va- 

 riety is more uncommon. 



§ Olaus Rudbeck was professor of Botany at Upsal, lie was a man of very 

 extensive learning ; in antiquities, especially those of the northern nations, and 

 in the learned languages, his knowledge is said to have been unbounded. He 

 was a good Anatomist, and an excellent Botanist, and, in this science he had, 

 says Sir J. E. Smith, erected to himself what might reasonably have been thought 

 a “ monumentuin asre perennius,” in one of the greatest undertakings of the 

 kind, a collection of fine wooden cuts of all the plants then known. They were 

 to have been arranged and named according to Bauhin’s Pinax, in 12 large 

 volumes folio; but two volumes were scarcely printed, when, in 1702, a dread- 

 ful fire, which laid almost all Upsal in ashes, destroyed his work, together with 

 many thousand wooden blocks already cut ; besides his herbarium, Ac. Grief 

 for their loss is supposed to iiave occasioned his death, which happened on the 

 12th of December, 1702. He was assisted in his great work above mentioned, 

 by his son, Olaus Rudbeck, who succeeded him as Professor of Botany at Up- 

 sal. All that now remains of this work are three copies of the first, and six 

 of the second volume ; these are now considered as great curiosities. A copy 

 of each of these two volumes is in the Sherardian Library in the Oxford Botanic 

 Garden. 



Linnjevs was possessed of about 120 of the wooden blocks of the first volume, 

 as well as 8 or 10 unpublished blocks belonging to some intended one ; all which 

 came, with his collection, into the hands of Sir J. E. Smith ; they are most of 

 them admirable figures of the Grasses. These Sir J. E. Smith published under 

 the title of Reliquice Rudbeckiance , folio, 1789. See Tr. of Linn. Soc. v.i. 

 p.22; and Loud. Gard. Mag. v. x. p. 111. 



A foreign genus of Sygenecious Plants, many handsome species of which are 

 now common in our gardens, was named Rudbeckia by Linn*us, after this 

 meritorious Botanist. 



