introduction. It resists cultivation in a remarkable manner, sub- 
mitting permanently neither to budding, nor grafting, nor laying, 
nor striking from cuttings ; nor, in short, to any of those operations, 
one or other of which succeed with other plants. Drought does not 
suit it, it does not thrive in wet ; heat has no beneficial effect, cold 
no prejudicial influence ; care does not improve it, neglect does not 
injure it. Of all the numerous seedlings that were raised by the 
Horticultural Society from Mr. Willock's seeds, and distributed, 
scarcely a plant remains alive. Two are still growing in a peat 
border in the Chiswick Garden; but they are languishing and 
unhealthy ; and we confess, that observation of them in a living 
state for nearly four years has not suggested a single method of 
improving the cultivation of the species. 
As to its genus, it is well known, that since the days of Linneus 
the characters of the genera of flowering plants have been exclusively 
taken from the organs of fructification, while those of vegetation 
have been rigorously excluded. This has arisen from the former 
having been supposed in all cases more constant in their modifica- 
tions, and less subject to variation, than the latter. No other reason 
can be assigned for the value thus exclusively ascribed to the organs 
of fructification. It is, however, time that Botanists should dis- 
embarrass themselves of this ancient prejudice, and admit publicly 
that by which they are constantly influenced in private — that 
important modifications of the organs of vegetation are sufficient to 
divide into genera, species which do not essentially differ in the organs 
of fructification. 
Of this the Indian Cypripediums are one instance, the genus 
Negundium is another, and the subject of this article is a third. 
The structure of its flower is in every respect that of a Rose; but its 
foliage is not even that of a Rosaceous plant, there being no trace of 
stipulae. The simple leaves are not analogous to the terminal pinna 
of a rose-leaf, for there is no trace of the articulation upon their 
petiole, which is required to indicate a reduction of a compound 
leaf, as we find in Berberis; neither can they be considered confluent 
stipula, for their venation is not what would be found under such 
circumstances, but precisely that of an ordinary leaf. 
J. L. 
ne — 
