HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



8 1 



nerves or arteries or some principal member be not 

 hurt." One may take it that wounds which do not 

 injure an artery or nerve are so trivial that they do 

 not require attention. 



But all these whimsical prescriptions gradually fell 

 out of the Pharmacopoeias. Howard's Dic- 

 tionary (1790) still repeated the Gitttctcc pubis, 

 an epileptic powder almost identical to those I 

 have quoted, from the Faris Pharmacopoeia. 

 It contained in its medley of ingredients, coral, 

 gold-leaf, "the horns of elk's-foot " and 

 "human skull." Howard says it "has been 

 deemed a very powerful antispasmodic, and is 

 said to have been administered for a consider- 

 able time with great success in the epilepsy." 

 It was, thus apparently credited within a 

 hundred years of to-day. And at the end of 

 the century we do not find one left, though 

 they undoubtedly lingered, and some of them 

 may be practised still, among those unqualified 

 practitioners whose superstition fills the place 

 of knowledge. 



Human milk was used as a nutriment in 

 wasting diseases, and Hooper has a great deal 

 to say about its analytical qualities (pp. 49S- 

 500). It was included in several older pre- 

 scriptions. 



The Bezoar microcosmicum, a calculus found 

 in the human bladder, was reputed to posess 

 alexipharmic virtues. 



The Quadrumana contributed nothing I can find 

 beyond the Bezoar simice. Of these peculiar stones 

 I shall speak generally when I come to the class from 

 which they were mostly obtained. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF VEGETABLE 

 TERATOLOGY. 



WE are certain that our botanical readers would 

 be doing their science a service by keeping 

 a special look-out during the coming summer for 

 vegetable "freaks," floral or otherwise, and record- 

 ing the same. 



Mr. F. J. Provis sends us the accompanying sketch 

 of a double ox-eye daisy {Chrysanthemum leucanthe- 

 mum), and a double primrose. As he acutely re- 

 marks, the latter seems to have half succeeded in 

 becoming an oxlip. 



Mr. Edward Bucknell, of Romsey, has also kindly 

 forwarded the drawing of an abnormal growth in 

 Gcnm rivale. He says:— "The whole plant is 

 coarser and more hairy than usual. Flower stalk 

 with a fusiform enlargement at five inches from the 

 ground. At this point there is a whorl of five green 

 leaves of natural appearance. Within this whorl, 

 and crowded around the stalk without orderly 

 arrangement, are what appear to be twelve large 

 petals, in colour, texture, and venation similar to a 



normal petal, but with crenated upper margins and 

 very long claws. Many of the latter are distinctly 

 hairy at their edges. Ten of these are of the size 

 represented in the sketch ; two are half that size and 

 rather greener ; several are deeply cleft. Within 



Fi^. 46. — Abnormal growth of Ccuin rivale. 



this second whorl is another consisting of six green 

 bristles, in appearance like the filaments of healthy 

 stamens ; no sign of anthers. The flower stalk passes 

 through the centre of this structure, and ends four 

 inches beyond it in two natural-looking buds. On 

 dividing the flower stem vertically, seven of the 

 petal-like processes are found to be attached on one 

 side, and five on the other. The latter side is 

 represented in the sketch." 



What botanist who has studied the buttercup 

 family {Raiiwieulacea) has not been impressed with 

 the fact that the monstrous or abnormal "freaks" 

 indulged in by members of one natural order actually 

 represent the normal structure in another ? In the 

 Ranunculacece we have a very great number of de- 

 partures from the type of R. ficaria. Some are 

 without petals, as Caltha palustris, the anemones, &c 

 Others have both sepals and petals, but the former 

 singularly modified and advanced to complex stages, 

 as in the columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris), larkspur, 

 &c. In the former we have the well-known spurs 

 developed in the sepals of the calyx. Are these 

 acquired characters ? The accompanying illustration 

 proves they are, for here we have a reversion, in the 

 shape of a " sport " to an earlier and simpler stage in 

 the flower's ancestry. 



The fact that floral organs (sepals, petals, stamens, 

 &c.) are developed, or are modifications of foliar 

 organs is frequently proved, both ways, by "sports.' 



