clover layer, where I this year find it most plentifully.

The author of the 'British Flora' says "much more rarely I have found one of these pistilliform bodies enlarged into a perfectly spherical form, tipped with a short, slender style, the whole not larger than the eighth of a perianth." He here describes, probably, an immature or abortive capsule; for the description answers to those which I have examined, excepting that the latter fill two thirds of a perianth, the lower portion of which is distended by the bulk of the capsule. He says further, "the contents of so small a body I could not satisfactorily ascertain, but they appeared, when pressed out, to consist of a pulpy substance." One fine one, which I broke open, contained 300 seeds, if I may so call them, each much resembling the capsule in their beautiful reticulations. They differ, however, from the latter, in being perfectly transparent, the light reflected from the mirror of the microscope being seen through their reticulations, while the capsule is yellow and opaque. The seeds are surrounded by a fluid substance, which disappears as they ripen, and amongst them are a few, irregular-shaped bodies, or collections of minute cells, of a bright green colour, beautifully contrasting with the pale yellowish hue of the seeds. The capsules are tough and highly elastic, bounding away from the microscope two or three feet when pressed with a needle.

The seeds from one very ripe capsule appeared to have an aperture on one side, but I have not been able to detect this appearance in any others; possibly because not sufficiently ripe.

Yarmouth, Norfolk,

April 21, 1846.

GEORGE FITT.

Notes on the Wild and Cultivated examples of Ribes rubrum. By HEWETT C. WATSON, Esq.

ON reading Dr. Bromfield's remarks upon the wild and garden currants of the Isle of Wight, in last month's 'Phytologist' (ii. 517), I proceeded to ascertain how far those in my own garden would correspond with either of the two varieties mentioned by Dr. Bromfield, the "sylvestre" and "sativum." I found the characters combined differently from their combinations reported by that exact botanist. But as there are several slight varieties of the red currant in cultivation,

it was to be expected that some would approach nearer to wild varieties.

On the 5th of May there were still several fresh-opened flowers, and even some unopened buds, on the bushes in my garden. In those recently expanded, the filament was about equal in length to the breadth of the anther; but in those which were fading, the filament was twice as long. (Such an elongation of the filament is observable in many plants). The lobes of the anthers, out-topping the connectivum, were separated by a space equal to their own breadth, or nearly so; being thus unlike the figure in English Botany,' and corresponding well with Dr. Bromfield's apt comparison to the head or "handle of a crutch."

On some bushes the flowers were of one uniform and yellowish green colour; while on others, each lobe of the calyx had a large blotch of brown or dull purple. The leaves of all had the character mentioned by Dr. Bromfield, though not equally so.

As

Thus, my garden bushes agree with the variety "sativum," in the main; but in the character of the anther, and partially in the colour of the flower, they belong rather to the variety "sylvestre." Moreover, I have several times observed that the leaves of stray seedlings, which spring up about the kitchen garden, and also (bird sown) among the shrubs in the flower-garden, are much more pubescent than those of their presumed parents, the cultivated bushes; nevertheless, some of these young examples have shown their parent foliage. such stray seedlings usually fall victims to the gardener's destructive labours, I cannot now find one of them sufficiently advanced to produce flowers. But under the facts here stated, the differences observed by Dr. Bromfield do not appear conclusive arguments against the likelihood of the wild bushes in the Isle of Wight being birdsown descendants of the garden currants. They may have multiplied in their wild state; but this fact, if it be such, will not make them "natives," in case their primary stock was that of the gardens.

Dr. Bromfield's opinion is no slight testimony in favour of the view which makes the currant a true native of Hampshire and Sussex. Still, it appears to myself, that in the absence of certain proof either way, the probability leans against the native claim of the red currant in the midland and southern counties. The propagation of fruit from seeds by the agency of man and birds, is an admitted and familiar fact; and we do not find currant bushes so numerous and general in the southern half of England, as to give this instrumentality the semblance of a cause inadequate to the results observed. I may confidently say

that, since July of last year, hundreds of seedling currants have sprung within the limits of my own gardens; many of them in spots to which they must have been conveyed by birds. I should therefore consider that birds and mankind might unconsciously stock the woods of the Isle of Wight in the space of a few years. The supply of seeds being constantly renewed, the stock would be kept up, under suiting conditions of soil and climate, even supposing the wild (become wild) bushes not to produce others from their own seeds, as would more probably be done under such conditions.

Dr. Bromfield observes that the wild currants flower at an earlier date than those of the garden, in the Isle of Wight. This is something additional to the evidence on the native side; but still far from conclusive. I cannot state anything positive about the currant; but we have an analogous case in the gooseberry. Occasionally the seedlings of the gooseberry have here escaped destruction, and produced flowers and fruit among the ornamental shrubs of the flower-garden. In this shaded situation, the leaf-buds of the gooseberry are at least a fortnight earlier in expanding than are those of their parents cultivated in the open borders of the kitchen-garden. I scarcely know whether to attribute this difference to the variety or to the shade. It is, however, a fact, that the shelter of trees will frequently hasten the leafing and flowering of plants in spring; the ground being much less cooled by radiation during the severe nights of winter and earlier spring, in such situations. At the same season, the surface of damp ground is less cold than that of dry ground, at least, it is so where the dampness is occasioned by water oozing out from underneath the surface. The damp and shaded places in the Isle of Wight, may really be less cold to a plant in early spring; although, as the season progresses, the open borders of a garden may acquire a higher temperature under the sun's rays; the balance left after radiation being then turned in favour of the garden ground.

Among notes of the dates at which garden plants open their first flowers in my own garden (say fifty feet above the sea), near the north base of a ridge of hills, rising from one to two hundred feet higher, I find the following:

Gooseberry, March 20, 1835.

March 20, 1836.

March 17, 1837

("N. B. A seedling bush flowered long since").

April 7, 1838.

› Black currant, April 16, 1835.

April 9, 1841. April 18, 1843. April 27, 1845.

April 28, 1838.

April 30, 1839.

HEWETT C. WATSON.

Thames Ditton,

May 6, 1846.

Notice of 'Outlines of Structural and Physiological Botany. By ARTHUR HENFREY, F.L.S., &c., Lecturer on Botany at the Middlesex Hospital, late Botanist to the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. Part I. Van Voorst, London.

AIDED by the wonderful improvement in microscopes, and the great advances in chemical science which have been made in late years, several eminent physiologists on the continent have laboured to explore the secrets of vegetable nature; but hitherto their publications have been almost inaccessible to many persons in this kingdom, who find it inconvenient to spend much money and time in the perusal of foreign periodicals. Such readers will now find the first part of this admirable little treatise an instructive summary of what has been written on the subject of elementary structures, to be followed up in two succeeding parts by an exposition of the organs of vegetation and those of reproduction and general Physiology. The book is not a mere compilation; but one of a class which in these days is very much wanted, where an accomplished student of Nature, judiciously availing himself of the labours of his predecessors and contemporaries, and submitting them to the test of re-examination, presents them in a concise and lucid form, enriched with original comments of his own. Here, too, the reader will find the various opinions of different writers usefully contrasted. Mr. Henfrey has laudably aimed at the exclusion of groundless hypotheses. The subject, indeed, cannot be profitably discussed without the introduction of theory. An actual knowledge of the process of vegetation is at present beyond our reach; but there are analogies observable in the lowest and simplest plants which tend to show that every individual plant originates in a single cellule. This conclusion can only be met by the difficulty of accounting for the diversity of structure presented by different parts of the tissue in the higher tribes. Physiologists have not been able to ascertain how many cellules exist in the embryo oak while it is yet lodged in the acorn; but it is almost impossible to conceive them to

be equal in number to those of the full-grown tree. If fewer, then the subsequent addition must have been elaborated by the primordial cellules. In the base of a stem of Botrychium Lunaria the rudimentary plant which is to expand two years hence, may be found lodged in the heart of another rudimentary plant which takes precedence of it, and waits to succeed the plant of the present season. The formation of buds in exogenous plants may commence at an equally early period: and if so, we may in vain hope to detect their elementary cellule, or to trace the order of development. Mr. Henfrey's useful book does all that can be done to simplify the study of vegetable physiology, and we cordially recommend it on account both of its excellence and its moderate price.

The numerous illustrations, executed by himself, are more truthful than any we have previously seen, and the details of the work are more in accordance with our own views than are given in any other English work. Only one exceptionable statement occurs to us. The commonly entertained opinion that the evolution of carbonic acid by night from the leaves of plants, proceeds from the oxidation of the tissues has, we think, been disproved by Liebig, who shows that it may be nothing more than the escape of what was contained in the water previously absorbed by the plant and passing off by evaporation.

G.

Notice of the London Journal of Botany,' No. 53, dated May, 1846.

(Continued from page 508).

THE Contents of this number are, "Contributions to a Flora of Brazil," by George Gardner (continued from the April number). "Botanical Information." "Catalogue of the First Series of Plants of Java, collected by Mr. Th. Lobb," by M. J. E. Planchon. "Description d'un genre nouveau, voisin du Cliftonia, avec des observations sur les affinités des Sauraya, des Sarracenia, et du Stachyurus," by J. E. Planchon. "New Hepatica," by Thomas Taylor, M.D.

The descriptions of South American Compositæ, necessary as such accounts may be to the technical and systematic botanist, will possess interest for few readers. The "Information" embraces announcements of Zeyher's South African Plants and Bergeau's Canary Plants, now on sale; along with short notices of Plee's "Type de chaque Famille et des principaux Genres des plantes croissant spontanement VOL. II. 3 Y