One of the plants noticed in the trip to Cuba as the emblem of ingratitude, is the Clusia. As we remarked elsewhere, the botany of the Island is a terra incognita to Northern men, and their knowledge is put to a' severe test during a short residence like our own; having lost the leaves, and, indeed, our whole collection of plants, we referred to a correspondent in Havana for confirmation of the species. The search for the name of the plant has revealed, from an obscure corner, the history of the individual after whom the Clusia is named, and it is as thoroughly a melancholy story as well can be recorded of a scientific man.

"The Clusia was so called, after the celebrated Charles de I'Ecluse, born at Artois, in 1526, and died in 1609. He was one of the most excellent botanists who ever lived, and author of many works whose value will only cease with the world. But he is not more known for his mental excellence than for his personal calamities. In his early youth, he undertook to travel through Portugal, Spain, England, Hungary, and other countries, in pursuit of plants - no easy task in those days. By excessive fatigue, he contracted, so soon as his twenty-fourth year, a dropsical complaint, of which he was afterwards cured with chicory, by the celebrated Rondelet. At the age of thirty-nine, he broke his right arm, during one of his botanical rambles; and a short time afterwards, his right thigh. When fifty-five, he dislocated his left ankle, while at Vienna; and eight years after, his right hip. Having been unskilfully treated, he was ever after obliged to walk with crutches. The consequent deprivation of his natural exercise brought on other diseases, among not the least distressing^ which were calculus and hernia.

After having been the Director of the Imperial Garden of Vienna for fourteen years, he returned to his native country (Flanders). He was named Professor of Botany at Leyden, where he gave botanical lectures for sixteen years, when he died, overwhelmed by the multitude of his bodily infirmities, but retaining his faculties unimpaired to the last." - Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants, p. 866.