yet there are few in the whole range of the vegetable kingdom, which are so much an object of curiosity to all observers, or of so much interest to the physiologist. On approaching Olinda, I was delighted to find the surface of the lake—which abounds in alligators—covered with thousands of the splendid large white blossoms and broad floating leaves of a water-lily (_Nymphæa ampla_, DC.), and intermingled with them, the yellow flowers of _Limnocharis Commersonii_, and a large _Utricularia_. The Botanic Garden is situated in a hollow, behind the town of Olinda, and, though of considerable size, has only a portion of it under cultivation; the residence of the Professor stands nearly in the centre. We found Dr. Serpa in his study, a rather large apartment, which he uses also as a lecture-room; he appeared to be about sixty years of age, and we were impressed with his agreeable manners and intelligence. Besides his other duties, he had the principal medical practice in Olinda. A few French works on Botany, Natural History, Agriculture, and Medicine, composed the chief part of his limited library. It was here that I first saw the ‘Flora Fluminensis,’ a work published at the expense of the Brazilian government. The drawings from which the plates were executed, were prepared at Rio de Janeiro about the end of the last century, under the direction of a Jesuit of the name of Vellozo. It cost £70,000, and, to use the words of Dr. Von Martius, is “a strange publication, which may be held up as an example of an ill-advised literary undertaking, and on so great a scale that it ought never to have been commenced. Eleven huge volumes, with about fifteen hundred plates, constitute this bulky work, whose usefulness is, alas! not in proportion to the expense it occasioned.”[4] The Doctor accompanied us in a walk round the Garden, which I found to contain little worthy of notice; a few European medicinal plants, struggling for existence, and some large Indian trees, being its principal productions; among the latter, however, were fine specimens of the Mango, Tamarind, Cinnamon, and the Date-Palm. He had lately received from the interior, plants of a species of Ipecacuanha, the roots of which form an article of export from Pernambuco, and the living specimens which I obtained from him are now growing freely in the stoves of the Glasgow Botanic Garden. They appear different from the one figured and described by St. Hilaire, from the south of Brazil, and will, I suspect, prove to be a distinct, though nearly related species. Leaving the garden, we walked a little way into the country, where I hoped to meet with something more interesting; and in this expectation I was not disappointed, as many new plants were added to my collections. On the dry bushy hills in this neighbourhood a wild fruit-tree grows very plentifully; it is the Mangába of the Brazilians, and the _Hancornia speciosa_ of botanists; it is a small tree belonging to the Natural