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 discovered. In his much-read novel, “The Black Tulip,” Dumas tells of the feud between Cornelius van Baerle and Boxtel in the days of the brothers De Witt, whose murder he graphically describes. In the seventeenth century a single bulb fetched thousands of florins, the Semper Augustus bulb attaining the price of 13,000 florins; but the Government put down speculation, and the value of the bulb fell to fifty florins. Some fifty species of the tulip have been described; the one from which most of the celebrated varieties have been derived is the Tulipa Gesneriana, which Conrad Gesner, a German, brought in 1559 from Constantinople to Augsburg, whence it found its way to Holland. Since then innumerable varieties have been originated, and Dutch growers now boast of nearly 2,000 varieties.

The cultivated varieties of tulips are