DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF NEW PLANTS. 
39 
specimens of this gigantic Water-lily to the Museum of Natural 
History in Paris. He had gathered them in the province of 
Corrientes, in a river tributary to the Rio de la Plata. The 
evident analogy between the foliage of this plant, and that of 
Euryale, induced the French botanists also to rank it as a species 
of that genus. Sir Robert Schomburgh also detected the plant 
in British Guiana when travelling on account of the Royal Geo¬ 
graphical Society of London, on the 1st of January 1837 in the 
river Berbice, (lat. 4° 30' N., long. 52° W.) and published a very 
interesting account of the discovery in a letter to the Geographical 
Society, which was made the groundwork of a more full history 
of the plant, accompanied by a splendid figure in a separate 
memoir .of atlas folio size, by Dr. Lindley. Only twenty-five 
copies were printed for private distribution in 1837, and shortly 
after, this gentleman published the same account with important 
additions, in the miscellaneous notices of the Botanical Register, 
whence copious extracts appeared in numerous Papers and 
Journals.” Seeds were brought home last year from Bolivia by 
Mr. Bridges, who thus describes his meeting with the plant: 
“ During my stay at the Indian town of Santa Anna, in the 
province of Moxos, republic of Bolivia, during the months of 
June and July, 1845, I made daily shooting excursions in the 
vicinity. In one of these I had the good fortune (whilst riding 
along the woody banks of the river Yacuma, one of the tribu¬ 
taries of the Mamore), to come suddenly on a beautiful pond, or 
rather small lake, embosomed in the forest, where, to my delight 
and astonishment, I discovered, for the first time, the ‘ Queen of 
Aquatics,’ the Victoria regia ! There were at least fifty flowers 
in view, and Belzoni could not have felt more rapture at his 
Egyptian discoveries than I did in beholding the beautiful and novel 
sight before me, such as it had fallen to the lot of few Englishmen 
to witness. Fain would I have plunged into the lake to pro¬ 
cure specimens of the magnificent flowers and leaves, but know¬ 
ing that these waters abounded in alligators, I was deterred from 
doing so by the advice of my guide and my own experience of 
such places. I now turned over in my thoughts how and in what 
way flowers and leaves might be obtained, and I clearly saw that 
a canoe was necessary, and therefore promptly returned to the 
town, and communicated my discovery and wants to the Correjidor 
