74 
species is new or not. This however seems to have been 
hitherto omitted by systematists. It is a fine, noble-looking 
shrub, with leaves a foot long and nine inches broad, and 
clusters of large handsome pure white flowers. It was re- 
ceived from Mexico by George Barker, Esq. who presented 
it to the Horticultural Society, in whose garden it is kept in 
the stove. 
STARCH ON THE OUTSIDE OF POLLEN-GRAINS. 
In the Annals of Natural History, vol. iii. p. 127, there 
is a report of a memoir upon pollen, read before the Botanical 
Society of Edinburgh, by M. Giraud, in which memoir the 
author states that there are ** minute opaque bodies on the 
surface of the pollen of Polemonium coeruleum, which, when 
immersed in water, appear to be possessed of spontaneous 
motion." Having lately been led to examine the structure 
of pollen, I took the opportunity of enquiring into the nature 
of that to which M. Giraud ascribes so singular a property. 
I had no difficulty in finding the bodies spoken of, for they 
are from js to ix, Of an inch in diameter, thickly stud the 
surface of the pollen-grain, which is itself about a; of an inch 
,in diameter, and are readily detached if the grains are 
placed in water, when they float about, turning upon their 
longer axis, with the same kind of motion as is seen in the 
molecules contained in the interior of the pollen. "They vary 
in form from oblong to spheroidal, but I do not find them 
opaque; on the contrary they are transparent, like grains of 
feecula, and so much like them, in certain states, that I felt 
persuaded from the first moment of seeing them that they 
were really of that nature. The application of iodine imme- 
diately gave them a pale blue colour; so that if this agent 
is in all cases a test of starch, the bodies seen by M. Giraud 
must be of that nature. ‘I regard this as a circumstance of 
some physiological interest, for I am not aware that amyla- 
ceous granules have been before detected on the outside of 
any vegetable organ. Pollen, indeed, being developed in 
the interior of the anther, and produced as it would seem 
by a disintegration of the parenchyma forming the mass 
of that organ, cannot strictly be compared to any part of a 
plant except to the individual cells or tubes constituting the 
elementary tissue ; nevertheless it is equally novel to find 
fecula secreted in the intercellular passages, its situation 
