Notes on Plants at Ro raima. 165 
spread among us that these rosettes of vegetable 
bayonets were poisonous, after causing some rather 
comic alarm, proved groundless. Where we first found 
the plant, as also on the sloping base of the mountain, 
it was out of flower, and though its withered flower-stems 
were extant, was even already seedless ; but on the top 
we found it in full and striking flower. From the centre 
of the rosette of leaves rises a single stem, perhaps 
eighteen inches in height, crowned by a very regularly 
formed whorl of dependent yellow flowers. The general 
appearance — the fades, to use a term recognized by botan- 
ists — was remarkably like that of the yellow form of the 
Crown Imperial {Fritillaria imp er talis). For the botan- 
ical description of this interesting plant, as indeed of all 
the other new plants of which I shall attempt to describe 
the fades, I must refer to the list carefully worked out 
at Kew. * 
After passing the first station of Abolboda sceptrum, 
till we reached the actual foot of Roraima, at the bed of 
the Kookenaam river, we continued through a country 
over which, though it was still furnished chiefly with the 
ordinary savannah vegetation, were scattered a few 
new plants ; and indeed as we advanced we met with 
an ever increasing number of these. Across this tra6t, 
about half-way between the station of Abolboda and 
the Kookenaam, flows the Arapoo river, which, falling 
down from Roraima, has its course marked in a 
* It may be here mentioned that three volumes of admirable original 
sketches of British Guiana plants made under the direction of (Sir 
Robert?) Schomburgk exist in the Herbarium of the British Museum. 
Among these sketches are to be found many Roraima plants, and, 
among others, Abolboda sceptrum. 
