Plants of this fine species have been pretty common in 
our collections for fifty years past; but it is believed that not 
more than one or two have blossomed during that period. 
In the magnificent gardens of Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, 
where the cultivation of the Cape Liliacew has been carried 
on upon a larger scale and with more success than in 
any other, no plant of this species has ever been known to 
flower: and its nearest congener ciliaris, also pretty com- 
mon in the European collections, appears never to have 
produced its bloom even in a single instance. 
The bulb of our sample was presented to H. R. H. Prince 
Leopold of Cobourg, with many others, by Mr. Burchell, 
on the return of that gentleman from his expedition into 
the interior of South Africa, and flowered in May last in 
the hothouse at Claremont, where it ripened its fruit in 
July. From thence we were favoured with the specimen for 
the use of this work. 
We have to thank Mr. Burchell for the obliging com- 
munication of the following memorandum concerning the 
species. “It is a plant of frequent occurrence in the more 
arid districts of Southern Africa, growing both in sandy 
<< plains and rocky spots on the banks of the Bushmen’s 
« River at Rautenbach’s Drift. It is also found on the 
« sreat sandy plains of Litaakun. I have been assured by 
«‘ the Bushmen themselves that the juice of the bulb is one 
“< of the ingredients most commonly used. in the poisonous 
«* composition with which the heads of their arrows are co- 
« vered. The wild antelopes seem carefully to avoid brows- 
“< ing the leaves of this plant, as I have observed it always 
“eft untouched, although the surrounding herbage has 
“been grazed over.” 
In the German edition of Lichtenstein’s Travels in South 
Africa we find another account of the Bushmen’s poison for 
their arrows. “The composition is of a brownish colour, 
and when fit for use sticky and of the consistence of wax, 
but soon becomes dry and hard. It is made by the mixture 
of several substances, the efficacy of which the Bushmen 
have learned by experiments upon living animals. The 
principal ingredient is always the poison taken from snakes, 
which being of itself too fluid and volatile for their use, Is 
incorporated with the juice of a large kind of Spurge 
(Eupnorsia), by which it acquires the waxy consistence al- 
