26 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



1848). — "Mr. T. Cox informa me that he has recently, without suc- 

 cess, examined Amersham church, in Bucks. There are specimens in 

 the Herbarium of the Botanical Society of London, marked from 

 Cavehill, Belfast, on the authority of Mr. W. 0. Newnham ; and others 

 firom rocks in Whamcliffe Wood, Yorkshire, said to have been collected 

 in 1838, by Mr. R. M. Eedhead. Mr. Hutcheson, gardener at Boxley 

 Abbey, informs me he gathered it in 1842 on rocks near Stonehaven, 

 in Kincardineshire. Many localities where it may exist have certainly 

 never been examined by a scrutinizing eye." The exact habitat near 

 Stonehaven, Mr. Hutcheson has subsei^uently informed me, has been 

 destroyed by the formation of the railway. 



Da. Asa Gray on the Development of the Seed-coats of Magnoliace(je * 



" I have now completed the investigation of the seeds of Magnolia 

 nwbrellay and have got a good set of sketches made by Sprague, whose 

 sharp eyes fully confirm all I stated. I can now further say, that the 

 cnistaceous covering of the seed is represented in the ovule only by the 

 innermost layer of cells of the external coat or primine ; that when the 

 seed is about half-grown, the cells of this innermost layer begin to in- 

 crease by merismatic division, and elongate horizontally, so producing 

 the crustaceous coat. Now (July 31) when the seeds of M. iimhrella 

 have attained their full size, this coat is already hard ; its very small 

 cells are thickened and indurated by a very irregular and reticulated 

 deposition on the walls, which, at the first appearance of these cells, 

 were very thin, and destitute of markings." 



Agave Ameeicana in Devonshire. 



The first American Aloe {Agave Americana) that ever grew and blos- 

 somed in the open air, in Britain, was in the garden of the late James 

 Yates, at Salcombe, Devonshire, about the year 1814. We thought it a 

 privilege to see the plant after it had done flowering, with the withered 

 scape, attesting the fact, still attached to it. That plant was stated to 

 have been only twelve years old. Its locality was upon the lawn in 



* See vol. vii. p. 243, of this Journal 



