BOTANICAL, INDEX 
11 
his observations together with the facts 
obtained from Hooker, D’Orbigny, 
Schornburgk and others, illustrated 
with a series of beautifully colored, life- 
like lithographs, which is one of the 
choice gems of American literature. 
Our illustrations are, also, taken from 
the same work, much reduced in size. 
Let us first review the history of its 
discoveries by European travelers, as 
gathered mainly from Mr. Allen’s 
work. In 1801, the Spanish govern- 
ment sent out the botanist, Hasnke, to 
investigate the vegetable productions 
of Peru, and in one of his pirouge 
(canoe) voyages, in 1803, with Father 
La Cueva, a Spanish missionary, on the Rio Mamore, one of the great tributaries of 
the river Amazon, they discovered, in one of the marshes by the side of the river, 
“a llovver so surpassingly beautiful and extraordinary, that Hsenke, in a transport of 
admiration, fell on his knees and expressed aloud his sense of the power and mag- 
nificence of the Creator in His works.” 
In 1819, Amie Bonpland, a French botanist and fellow-laborer of Humboldt, in a 
voyage down the little river Rio Chuelo, saw from a distance this superb plant, and 
nearly precipitated himself off the raft into the river in his desire to secure some 
specimens, and his enthusiasm was so great that he was able to speak of little else 
for a month. The next year, (1820,) however, he had the pleasure of obtaining spec- 
imens of this plant not far from the forks of the Parana and Rio Paraguay rivers, 
near the town of Corriente's. 
Fig. 161. Young Plant. — After Allen. 
Fig. 162. Young Plant at the Completion of the Second Cycle of Growth of Five Leaves. —After Allen. 
M. Alcide d’ Orbignv was the next European traveler who saw the plant. In 
1827, when descending the river Parana in his frail pirogue, and accompanied by 
two Guarani Indians, and more than nine hundred miles from its junction with 
the Rio de la Platte, at a place called the Arroya de San Jose, in the province of Cor- 
rientes, he observed that the marshes on either side of the river, for a mile, were 
bordered with a green and floating surface of huge, round and curiously mar- 
gined leaves, while here and there glittered the magnificent white and pink fra- 
grant flowers. 
Dr. Poppig. a German botanist, was the next European to record its existence. 
After a residence of five years in Peru and Chili, (from 1827 to 1832,) he met with it 
while descending the Amazon, and was the first one to publish a description of it 
upon his return to Europe. 
