AMHERSTIA NOBILIS. 
515 
ness is weakly, and worse than standing still. 
No man ought to work a house without a 
registering thermometer ; he would then see 
to what extent he had raised the heat, and 
to what extreme it had fallen ; but what we 
desire to inculcate here is, that the fire ought 
not to be made up at night only, and that 
increasing the heat of a house in the darkness 
is contrary to nature in every respect, and 
therefore injurious to plants. It may not be 
of so much consequence to some things as 
others, but it cannot be defended on the 
ground of its approximation to nature in any 
of her phases. If plants are to be shut up, it 
is better by daylight than dark, and those 
who care much for their greenhouse, will 
prefer keeping the fire going by day-light, that 
the house may be sufficiently warm when 
closed to stand all the frost from without till 
early in the morning. 
We confess that there is some difficulty in 
thus managing the greenhouse, because the 
less it is above freezing point of a night, the 
better it is for the plants, so that the frost 
be kept out ; yet it is difficult to make sure 
of that during a whole night without getting 
it up considerably above it. We recommend, 
though it may be a little extravagant, fires in 
the greenhouse by daylight, and air given to 
keep down the temperature a little, but the 
fire to be let down at night before closing the 
house, or so reduced as merely to keep alight; 
then, supposing it to be a frosty night, the fire 
set off again before day-break, so that it may 
be up in temperature as soon as it is light. 
Every house has its peculiarities, and a 
man must act according to circumstances; but 
we would have everybody who has to manage 
houses study how he can best meet the natural 
requirement of plants — a colder atmosphere 
at night. It is the perversion of temperature 
that causes many of the failures which a 
gardener meets with in his travels through 
life ; and the sooner he contrives to get over 
the evil, the better for himself and the plants. 
How he may do this best depends on the ca- 
pabilities of his houses, but it should be his 
study until he accomplishes it. It is more 
important in his greenhouse than in any other 
department, because all Botany Bay plants 
suffer more than we can describe from arti- 
ficial heat at night. They look worse than 
any other when drawn, and suffer more per- 
manently from the drawing. j 
AMHERSTIA NOBILIS. 
" The first notice I had of the existence of 
this magnificent tree, the prince of flowering 
trees," says Dr. Wallich, " was at Rangoon, in 
August, 1826, when Mr. Crawford favoured 
me with some dried unopened flowers, and a 
leaf of it, with the information that he had 
gathered it in a garden belonging to a monas- 
tery, around the hill at Kogun, on the Saluen 
River, in the province of Martaban, where 
they appeared too beautiful an object to be 
passed unobserved, even by the uninitiated in 
botany. Handfulls of flowers were found as 
offerings in the caves before the images of 
Buddha." 
In March, 1827, Dr. Wallich accompanied 
the British envoy to Ava, and in his official 
report of a journey on the River Saluen, in 
order to examine the site and capabilities of 
the teak forests in that direction, he thus 
writes : — " In about an hour I came to a de- 
cayed Kioum (a sort of monastery), close to 
the large hill of Kogun, distant about two 
miles from the right bank of the river, and 
twenty-seven from the town of Martaban. I 
had been prepared to find a tree growing 
here of which an account had before been 
communicated to me by Mr. Crawford, and 
which I had been fortunate enough to meet 
with for the first time a week ago at Marta- 
ban ; nor was I disappointed. There were 
two individuals of this tree here : the largest, 
about forty feet high, with a girth, at three 
feet above the base, of six feet, stood close to 
the cave ; the other was smaller, and over- 
hung an old square reservoir of water, lined 
with bricks and stones. They were profusely 
ornamented with pendulent racemes of large 
vermilion-coloured blossoms, forming superb 
objects, unequalled in the Flora of the East 
Indies, and, I presume, not surpassed in 
magnificence and elegance in any part of the 
world. The Birman name is Tolia. Neither 
the people here nor at Martaban could give 
me any distinct account of its native place of 
growth ; but there is little doubt that it be- 
longs to the forests of this province. The 
ground was strewed, even at a distance, with 
its blossoms, which are carried daily as offer- 
ings to the images in the adjoining caves. 
Round the spot were numerous individuals of 
Jonesia Asoca'm full blossom, inferior in beauty 
only to those trees ; and it is not a little re- 
markable, that the priests in these parts should 
have manifested so good a taste as to select 
two sorts of trees as ornaments to their objects 
of worship belonging to a small bat well- 
marked and extremely beautiful group in the 
extensive family of leguminous plants." 
This tree, which " when in full blossom is 
the most striking superb object that can pos- 
sibly be imagined," Dr. Wallich had the 
gratification of naming in compliment to the 
Right Honourable the Countess Amherst and 
her daughter Lady Sarah Amherst, the zea- 
lous friends and constant promoters of natural 
history, especially botanv, in India. 
I. l 2 
