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Historical. 23lily as N alba simply. In many points the description is only a repetitionof earlier writers ;the flowers are said to be odorless, with the outerleaves greenish as in Ornithogalum (ut Ornithogali).A " NymphaeaBrasiliensis," known to the natives as Aguape, and described in nearlythe same words as used by Piso, isgiven here, on the authority ofMarggrav's observations, and classed as belongingto N alba. A fifthspecies is added, N alba major Aegyptiaca. The specific descriptionof this refers to the " crenate leaves " which identifyit with N lotus L.,and the statement is added, " flores . . .semper supra superficiem aquae."The object of this addition comes out when in the succeeding paragraphthe stories of Theophrastus, Pliny, and Alpinus are given regarding theretirement of the flower far under water at night,and the writer boldlyconcludes, " Nobis certe incredibilia videntur."Jacobus Breynius (1680) is one of the few among the early botanistswho considered new and foreign plants. His second Prodromus gives"Nymphaea flore coeruleo odoratissimo, Cap. bonae spei nobis," and;"Nymphaea flore suave purpurascente Japonica nobis." The former;is doubtless N. capensis Thunb., the latter Nelumbo.The magnificent "Flora Malabarica" of Van Rheede (1692) containsfigures of a number of water plants. In vol. 11, plates 26, 27, 28 and 29represent plants with floating leaves, all under the general Malabar nameof Ambel. The first, called simply Ambel, isNymphaea pnibescens; the second,Cit-Ambel is the source of Willdenow's Nymphaea stellata, a bluefloweredwaterlily. The other two, Nedel-Ambel and Tsjeroa-Ambel areLimnanthemums. All are quite fairly recognizable from the engravings,at least as to their generic position. It is interestingto note that thenatives of the Malabar coast classed Nymphaea and Limnanthemumunder the same type or genus, just as did their European contemporaries.The text accompanying the plates refers chieflyto the medicinalproperties of the plants.In 1696 Commelin published Latin names and synonymy for thespecies illustrated by Van Rheede. To Ambel he gave the title " Nymphaeaindica, flore candido, folio in ambitu serrato," although he regarded itas identical with the Egyptian white lotus according to Parkinson, Alpinus,and Vesling. Cit-Ambel was dubbed "Nymphaea malabarica minor, folioserrato" and was a new species to European botany.Perhaps the most magnificent and exhaustive botanical work of thepre-Linnaean period is the " Phytographia " of Plukenet (1691-96), withits exquisite engravings and its several companion volumes of text. We