CHAPTER VIII 
AQUATICS 
Victoria 
Regia. 
Two glass-houses in Kew are devoted to the cultivation of tropical 
aquatic plants. One is No. io, in the T-Range, the other is No. 15, 
near the Palm House. The famous Victoria regia occupies 
one house, but owing to the disease by which it has, in 
late years, been attacked, it has been found advisable 
to change its quarters occasionally. The house not occupied by it 
is devoted mainly to a collection of Nymphaeas. First among aquatic 
plants in importance and interest, for it is one of the vegetable 
wonders of the world, is the Victoria regia. The middle of the 
nineteenth century was a stirring time in horticulture. A greater 
number of prodigies in plant-life were discovered or introduced to 
notice about that time than, perhaps, at any other period. We may 
instance three : the Victoria regia , the mammoth trees of Calaveras, 
and W elwitschia mirabilis. Of them all, the Victoria regia created 
the greatest sensation in England, for it has the unusual quality of 
attaining in British hothouses, and in a single year, its full develop- 
ment and beauty. This beauty, moreover, is scarcely, if at all, 
inferior to that of the wild plants whose huge circular leaves float 
on the backwaters of the Amazon and other South American rivers. 
It opened its first flower at Kew in 1850, and ever since has been 
one of the most popular sights there. 
The original discovery of the Victoria regia by Europeans was 
made as far back as 1801. In that year a botanist named Haenke 
had been sent by the Spanish Government to Peru, to 
investigate its vegetable products. In company with 
a missionary named La Cueva, he was travelling in a 
pirogue on the river Mamore, one of the tributaries of the Amazon, 
when he came upon this noble aquatic in one of its backwaters. It 
was subsequently noticed by several European travellers, among 
others by Bonpland (at one time coadjutor of the great Humboldt) 
164 
Its 
Discovery. 
