MAGNOLIAS, MICIIELI/E ET KADSURA NAPALENSES.• 
Next after the stately Rhododendrum arborcum , the members of the family of Mag - 
noliacece claim the most conspicuous rank among the vegetable productions of Nipal, 
whether we consider the magnificence and fragrance of their flowers, the beauty of their 
foliage, or the general elegance of their growth. They are without exception large de¬ 
ciduous forest trees, yielding excellent wood for the purposes of carpentry and joinery, 
and not only admitting of being introduced into Bengal (three of the five growing with 
great luxuriance in the Honourable Company ’s botanic garden at Calcutta' , but holding 
out fair prospects of standing the w inter even of Europe. They blossom during the 
summer and ripen their fruits about the close of the rains ; during winter, that is to say, 
from the beginning of November to the end of February, they shed their leaves in com¬ 
mon with the majority of the trees of that Europe-like country ; and in March they are 
again lull ol bu Is^which jsoon are succeeded by those of the blossoms. These buds are 
ol a nature which is, 1 believe, peculiar to this family, and unite, at once, their own pro¬ 
per function, of protection to the tender shoots, to that, belonging more properly to the 
office of stipules. They consist, of two, at first fleshy, afterwards membranous scales, 
which are always more or less downy, cohering in the shape of a cylindric tube, whose 
base is inserted circularly round the branch and obliquely along a protuberance on the 
upper side of the petiol, which latter scarcely extends bey ond this said insertion and is 
at first totally destitute of any leaf-like appearance. As soon as the bud has come to its 
full size it splits into two equal lobes, beginning from the base and ascending along that 
side, which is opposite to its insertions on the petiol and soon drops off in the form of 
two large stipules .—1 he flower buds are large, solitary, erect, of an oval form, mostly 
clothed with wool or down, lifted up on a short, stout, columnar peduncle, and in 
Michelia always axillary ; they are enveloped in two entire, membranous, rounded 
spatlies, the outer one much sooner caducous than that within, which is contracted at 
the base into a cylinder, closely embracing the upper part of the peduncle. When it 
is considered, that these noble trees are natives of a country, yvhere the heat is never in¬ 
tense, and where they are exposed, during four months of the year, to a rather severe 
winter, sometimes even to falls of snow ; that they are deciduous, and lastly, that they 
are extremely well furnished with protection for the tender leaves and blossoms ; rea¬ 
sonable hopes may be entertained of their standing the winter even of England, equally 
well with many other plants from those regions, which I have already had the happi¬ 
ness of introducing, and which I believe, have answered every expectation._To the 
practical botanist such details as these are neither uninteresting nor unimportant; I 
shall therefore resume them in treating of each particular species. 
My two Magnolias are entirely new, aud they certainly yield to none of North Ameri¬ 
ca in splendour and magnificence ; one of them furnishes a very useful sort of wood, 
called Chaump , which is highly prized for furniture.—Two of the Micheliie have been 
noticed by professor De Candolle, in his invaluable Systema Naturale ; but his de¬ 
scriptions are rather short anti deficient, owing to their having been made from dried 
specimens, which were collected above twenty years ago, by my friend and pre- 
* The following account of these genera was presented to the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta in May 1823, and it is 
with the coascut of that highly meritorious body, that 1 am permitted to introduce it here in its original form, with very few addi¬ 
tion* or alterations. $ t 
A 
