OF CORNWALL. 227 
Fig. xl. c, d , Plate xx. page 186. It ftiot above live inches at a 
medium in twenty-four hours for the firft month, but gradually lefs 
as it approached the fummit. On the 21ft day after its appearance 
the top of the ftalk was fourteen feet from the ground, in which 
ftage of growth I give it Plate xx. Fig. xxxvm. On the 4th of 
Auguft the principal parts were all formed, (as Fig. xxxix. ibidem) 
the leaves fix feet high ; their fpread eleven feet ; circumference of 
the ftalk at the top of the leaves fifteen inches ; from the ground 
to the under branch ten feet : the branches were thirty-eight in 
number ; they extended from the ftalk at a medium two feet, each 
branch fhooting from above one of the marginal leaves or appen- 
dixes ; at the extremity of each branch was its bunch of flowers, 
which confifted of feven or eight pedimculi ; on each peduncle there 
were from fourteen to forty-feven pods, very like the white lilly 
pods : the pods on one branch we had the curiofity to number, 
and they amounted in all to two hundred and nineteen; the bunch 
of flowers on each branch appeared September 16, as b , Fig. xl. 
ibid. The corolla, or fyftem of generative parts, C, C, Fig. xli. 
ibid, is of the natural fize ; it was of a light-green colour ; 0, 
is the capfula , filled with clear water, fweet as hony : the top of the 
capfula is divided into fix petals in the fhape of fingers, which 
grafp the piftil g, rifing out of the center of the capfula , furround- 
ed with fix filaments e , <?, and on the point of each filament 
one anthera, covered with the farina , as f f all of a bright 
Naples-yellow colour. September the fixteenth the ftalk, with the 
flowers on the top, was twenty-one feet fix inches high, having 
grown only four inches in height from the fourth of Auguft : the 
undermoft branches were now nearly in full blofiom, the upper 
ones more backward ; the outmoft leaves of the plant next the 
ground were a little flaccid and difcoloured, a prelude to the ap- 
proaching decay; for, as thefe fconces (fo fome have called the 
flower-branches) fucceflively break forth into weighty bunches of 
rich yellow flowers ; the afcent of fap is fo copious, that the per- 
fpiratory duds, and the other neceflary vefiels of vegetation, be- 
come too diftended ever to recover their former tone ; the root alfo 
(none of the moft robuft) by the continual duty of fupplying fuch 
quantities of moifture for the flowers, is worn out, and the ftately 
plant bloflbms but once, (as if the produdion was too precious to 
be repeated) then languifhes and dies; but its decay is flow and 
and commenfurate to the time it takes up in putting forth its flow- 
ers. On January 10, 1758, about fifteen of the under branches 
had dropped their feed-pods, the uppermoft ftill retaining theirs ; 
the ftalk not much fhrunk, and the fucculent leaves next the 
ground as frefti as three months before ; fome have lived twelve 
months 
