Many bulbs of this pretty and variable Crocus were sent 
to Spofforth, in 1840 and 1841, at my request, by Mons. Pal- 
medo, the British Consul at Bastia, having been procured 
through his kind offices by Signor Romagnuoli from Turiani, 
and the Bocca di San Antonio, three or four leagues from 
Bastia, from Corte, Mount San Lionardo, Pigno, Capo Corso, 
and the Torre di Seneca. The greatest pains were taken to 
discover the C. minimus of Decandolle ; it is certainly one 
of the smaller varieties of insularis, which name, given by 
Mons. Gay, though posterior, must be preserved to the species, 
because minimus is only applicable to the smaller varieties. 
The species, which has sometimes a faint smell of primrose, 
approaches most nearly to the Italian C. suaveolens, from which 
it may be distinguished, in all its varieties, by the absence of 
yellow in the throat, which is deep in both Suaveolens and 
Imperatonianus. The absence or presence of yellow in the 
throat seems to be an invariable feature in Croci. Insularis 
produces usually only one shoot and flower, and no bract; 
but the fourth rare variety found on M. Pigno and M. 
d’Oleastro, approaches to C. versicolor, by a two-flowered invo- 
lucre, and sometimes, though rarely, a lorate bract, and the 
leaf one- (if not two-) nerved; but it conforms too closely with 
its compatriots in other respects, to be separated as a species. 
They grow on the hills of schist, (talq schisteux d^com- 
posee, jRomagn.) and are rare in the W. of the island. Ac- 
cording to Mons. Gay they extend into Sardinia. The genus 
reaches from the Atlantic to the Caspian ; the roots of the 
Pyrenees in Aquitania, Cevennes, the Swiss Alps, the Danube 
to about Trajan’s bridge, the high ground of S. Podolia, in 
lat. 49, that N. of Odessa, Tauria, and Caucasus to the Cas- 
pian Sea form its northern limits. Tangiers, Malta, Cyprus, 
Crete, and Aleppo are the lowest ascertained S. limits of the 
race, about lat. 35. I cannot ascertain whether it extends to 
the high grounds near Damascus ; nor have I been able to 
learn where or by what geological formation it is stopped in 
Persia and S.E. of the Caspian. The alluvial tracts of Poland 
and the Ukraine, and the salt plains arrest it on the N. and 
N.E. Naturalized in some parts of England, it is certainly 
not indigenous. The involucre of C. imperatonianus usually 
contains a secondary involucre to the second spathe.- — W . H. 
For the foregoing account, and the accompanying drawing 
we have to return our acknowledgments to the learned Dean 
of Manchester, by whom these charming plants have been 
studied with peculiar care. 
