46 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. III.—B. S. 
Stapelias , Aristolochias , and Aroidece , and, in a less 
degree, the fruit of St. John’s Bread. It is strange 
that this carrion-like smell in plants should in so 
many cases accompany a dark brown or dark blue 
colour, and it would be worth while to endeavour to 
ascertain the chemical principle here at work. At 
the base of each of the six petals, the Palanca has a 
gland, and I fancied that the smell principally pro¬ 
ceeded from its secretions. To my delight I found 
that the plant constituted a new genus of Anonacece, 
distinguished by having the largest known petals of 
the Natural Order to which it belongs. Afterwards I 
met with it in abundance between Leon and Granada, 
and collected good specimens of it for onr herbaria. 
At the suggestion of Mr. J. J. Bennett, F.R.S., of the 
British Museum, I gave it the name of Sapranthus 
Nicaraguensis * I am sorry to add, however, that my 
travelling companions who afterwards saw me busy 
myself with the plant would not adopt this correctly- 
formed and expressive Greek name, but insisted upon 
dubbing it “ Stinkadora .” 
We have heard lately much about mimicry in na¬ 
ture, where certain features of one species reappear in 
another not in any way related to it, as, for instance, 
in the pineapple, where the fruit bears a striking ex¬ 
ternal resemblance to a pine-cone ; certain spiny Eu¬ 
phorbias, where the stem has the look predominating 
in the cactus tribe, or in the iron or beef-woods ( Ca - 
suarinas ), where the branches are singularly like our 
horsetails, or Equisetums. On the Nicaraguan rivers 
* Seemann’s ‘Journal of Botany,’ vol. iv. p. 369, t. 64. 
