pdf 25 MB - BSBI Archive

ON THE PHOENIX OF THE HONGKONG FLORA. io
and all purely accidental. At present, it will suffice to notice that the
quotation, as from me, under the head of " Lemnacea," was never mine
either in spelling or meaning ; and that the opening statement, surely
a mere inadvertency, is equally calcuLited to mislead. Here it is :
" In a paper published in the ' Quarterly Journal of Microscopical
Science,' Dr. Lankester called attention to the constant occiu-rence of
raphides in certain Orders of plants, and since then Professor Gulliver
has published a series of exhaustive obsei-vations on the subject."
Now, so far from following, I preceded Dr. Lankester in this in-
quiry, as plainly appears from his own paper, which was obviously
Avritten merely to introduce the subject to the readers of the Journal,
then edited by him ; but, though excellent for this purpose, without
even a single original observation of his own concerning " the constant
occuiTence of raphides iu certain Orders," while in that very paper he
quotes one or other of my memoirs, previously published iu the ' Annals
of Natural History,' in proof of the ordinal value of the character
sometimes afforded by raphides in systematic botany.
Canterbury, Deccmlcr 12th, 1868.
ON THE PHCENIX OF THE HONGKONG FLOEA.
By H. F. Hance, Ph.D., etc.
The existence of a wdld Date-Palm in Hongkong was, I believe,
first mentioned by Mr. Bentham, in his enumeration of the plants
collected in the island by the late Lieut. -Colonel Champion ;* without,
however, any attempt to determine the species. Two years later. Dr.
Seemann t referred my specimens of the plant to P. ucauUs, Eoxb.,
remarking that the presence or absence of a stem afibrds no reliable
cliaracter in the genus. Mr. Bentham subsequently, | whilst retaining
this name with a mark of doubt, observed that the genuine plant has a
short bulb-shaped stem, and that the Hongkong specimens at his dis-
posal were undistinguishable from P. palndosa, Roxb. At a later
date, I described § the plant more iu detail, pointing out that it
* Hooker's Kew Gard. Misc. vii. 33. (1855.)
t Bot. Vov. Herald, 416.
X ' Flora of Hongkong,' 340. (1861).
§ Ann. Sc. Nat. 5me ser. v. 247. (1866.)
—