[ 5*9 ] 
You muft know then, that we have lately got 
into a method of cultivating: that elegant evergreen- 
tree, called in South Carolina and the Floridas, the 
Loblolly -bay, or Alcea FJoridana , &c. of Catcfby’s 
Hiftory of Carolina, vol. I. tab. 44. p. 44. 
This tree has lately produced fome well-blown 
flowers, in the curious botanic garden of Mr. Bewick, 
at Clapham, near London, who was fo obliging to 
fend them to me to examine their characters while 
frelh : I had very fortunately by me fome dried 
fpecimens, which had been fent me from our mutual 
friend Dr. Alexander Garden, of Charles-town, 
South-Carolina. When I compared the frefh fpeci- 
mens with the dried ones, it foon became evident to 
me, why you judged it to be of the clafs of Poly- 
adelphia, and placed it among the Flypericwns with 
the trivial name of Lafianthus. For the flamina in 
the dried fpecimen appeared to be divided into five 
diflinft phalanges, or bundles, with their filaments 
united together ; but when you obferve the figure and 
defcription of the new-blown flower, you will find 
that the filaments of the flamina being united at the 
bottom in a circle round the top of a funnel- fhaped 
tube, will bring it to the clafs of Monadelphia, and 
probably next to the Stewariia. The only doubt I 
have in the defcription is, whether the ftyle fhould 
be called one or five, the latter of which numbers 
you have adopted, and perhaps more properly, but 
in that I fhall fubmit to your decifion. 
If, after you have feen it, you think, with many 
of your friends, both here and in America, that it is 
a new genus, I defire it may have a place among 
1 you c 
