African and French marigolds, _tagetes erecta_ and _patula_, are indigenous in South America, and were known to botanists under the name of _caryophillus Indicus_, from which is derived the French appellation _œillet d’ Inde_. Cordus calls them, from their native country, _tanacetum Peruvianum_. Among the most beautiful ornaments of our gardens, is the bella-donna lily, _amaryllis formosissima_, the flower of which, composed of six petals, is of a deep red color, and in a strong light, or when the sun shines upon it, has an agreeable yellow lustre like gold. The first roots of it ever seen in Europe were procured in 1593, on board a ship which had returned from South America, by Simon de Tovar, a physician at Seville. In the year following, he sent a description of this flower to Clusius; and as he had at the same time transmitted some roots to Bernard Paludanus, and count d’Aremberg, the former sent a dried flower, and the latter an accurate drawing of it, to Clusius, who published it in 1601. One of the Robins gave, in 1608, a larger and more correct figure, which was afterwards copied by Bry, Parkinson, and Rudbeck; but a complete description, with a good engraving, was published in 1742, by Linnæus, who in 1737 gave to that genus the name by which they are known at present. Tovar received it from South America, where it was found by Plumier and Barrere, and at a later period by Thiery de Menonville. At first it was classed with the narcissus, and it was afterwards called _lilio-narcissus_, because its flower resembled that of the lily, and its roots those of the narcissus. It was named _flos-Jacobæus_, because some imagined that they discovered in it a likeness to the badge of the knights of the order of St. James in Spain, whose founder, in the fourteenth century, could not indeed have been acquainted with this beautiful amaryllis.