321 
to observing this fern is in much danger of mistaking the half-un- 
folded sterile fronds for sports. Along the upper Hudson river, it 
seems to me that the immense beds of Orontium are rather increas- 
ing than diminishing. 
Western New York explorers know well how many springs in the 
region of the parallel lakes boil suddenly up from a hole in the rock, 
with water of the coldest and clearest; and how the stream thus 
formed almost invariably fills with thriftiest edible water cress. Seeing 
some such phenomena again a few days since reminds me of one 
almost exactly the same in the island of Cyprus. While travelling 
about the island with General di-Cesnola, we came to a beautiful 
grass plat (an uncommon thing in the East) not far from the ruins of 
Soli, along the shore. About a dozen such springs boiled out of the 
ground, and furnished not only life to this grass-plot, but each sent 
its rapid stream through it or along its edge, when all joined and 
rushed into the sea, over a bar of quicksand that nearly swallowed 
up one of our men and mules. In each of.the streamlets, and in the 
main stream as well, was an abundance of thrifty water cress, identical 
in species with that so commonly eaten in the oyster saloons in New 
York City. I never saw it elsewhere in Cyprus. At my suggestion, a 
quantity was gathered for our supper, and eaten by all with great relish, 
though I had to separate it carefully from a little poisonous umbellifer, 
whose name I have forgotten, and which grew in the midst of the cress 
and much resembled it. I might add that the only mention of this place 
of springs to be found in earlier writers was made somewhat morethan 
a century ago by an ecclesiastic, who describes the place unmistaka- 
bly, but mistakenly speaks of the springs as hot and medicinal. 
One more note will do. As Mr. Redfield can inform you, the 
Philadelphia markets are an excellent locality for botanists who 
wish to get fresh specimens, in proper season, of most of the pretty 
plants of the New Jersey Pines. This spring large quantities of the 
wild Viola tricolor were brought in, but I could not learn their pre- — a 
cise habitat. 
June 8th, Te PIAL: 
§ 322. A New Theory in regard to Galls.—Insect galls, which | . 
are usually regarded as excrescences—a diseased condition of 
vegetable tissue, resulting from the injection of some fluid or secretion 
by insects—are viewed by Mr. A. S. Wilson, of Aberdeen, from an 
entirely different standpoint. This gentleman, in an interesting © = 
communication to Wature, says that all insect galls are in reality 
leaf-buds, or fruit-buds, and not mere amorphous excrescences. The 
vascular lines which would form leaves can easily be followed up the 
structure of the oak-leaf galls. And in cases where the egg has been 
deposited in the tissue of a young branch, the cap of the gall is 
sometimes surmounted by a leaf two or three inches long. But in 
the large blue Turkish galls many lacune occur where the fleshified © 
leaves have not filled up the spaces between them. Mr. Wilson 
promises before long to work out the morphology of the hollow woody 
shell, and the enclosed starch, etc., found in the interior of these 
