Botanical Society of Edinburgh* 277 



been introduced into Corfu, and apparently with success. Capt. Port- 

 lock describes it as an excellent vegetable, being dry, and between 

 the potato and parsnepin taste. 



2. " On the Defoliation of Trees," by the Rev. Dr. Fleming. After 

 referring to the extremely defective nomenclature connected with the 

 *' defoliation of trees " employed in the writings of Lindley, Gray, 

 and others, the author called the attention of the Society to a classi- 

 fication of the phsenomena which he had published in the * Edinburgh 

 Journal of Science' (Brewster) in Jan. 1826, and where leaves are 

 arranged in reference to their duration into three groups — Folium 

 deciduum, Folium annuum, Folium per enne. In the first class the leaves 

 cease to exercise their functions when the buds have been perfected, 

 and fall off in succession before winter ; or, when the plant is trained 

 as a hedge, they frequently remain until the evolution of the buds 

 in the following spring. In the second class the leaves outlive the 

 winter, and do not die or fall off until a number of new leaves have 

 been evolved for the support of the plant in spring or summer. Such 

 are the bay, laurel, holly and ivy, which are never without living 

 leaves, while in the first class such leaves are periodically wanting. 

 In the third class the leaves continue to exercise their functions for 

 several years, as in the Firs, an arrangement in part connected with 

 the ripening of the seeds. He then proceeded to expose the erro- 

 neous views of those who maintain that it is only the buds of a tree 

 which are alive, and that its timber is dead, and destined to serve 

 merely as a soil for the buds on their evolution in spring. He re- 

 stricted his proofs to the leaves and branches connected with them 

 which live throughout a succession of seasons — to the mode in which 

 buds can he forced — and to the individual differences preserved, in 

 the case of fruit-trees, between the stock and graft during the whole 

 period of their connection. 



3. " On Carex saxatilis (L.) and Carex Grahami (Boott)," by Dr. 

 Balfour, who endeavoured to show that intermediate forms exist 

 which seem to connect the two species. He exhibited specimens 

 picked on Ben na Cruichben, near Killin, in 1844, which showed 

 characters partly of the one species and partly of the other ; all gra- 

 dations are found from the true form of C. saxatilis with its rounded 

 or ovate, dark, erect spikes, ovate, beaked, emarginate perigynia 

 slightly longer than the scale, to C. Grahami with its oblong-ovate, 

 somewhat nutant spikes, and bifurcate perigynia twice as long as the 

 scales. 



Dr. Balfour exhibited a series of American Ferns from Dr. Gavin 

 Watson of Philadelphia, among which the following were the most 

 interesting species and varieties : — Cistopteris tenuis of Schott, a va- 

 riety of C. fragilis, and various intermediate forms ; Polystichum 

 acrostichoides, some specimens with rounded pinnae, and others with 

 the pinnae much divided and deeply serrated — among the latter were 

 several with the fructification extending to the lowest pinnae ; Dipla- 

 zium thelypteroides of Presl, several with segments of the pinnae very 

 acute ; Lastrcea spinulosa, various forms, including L. intermedia of 

 American botanists ; Lastreea lancastriensis, a form approaching L. 

 cristata, but apparently distinct : in some specimens the frond wf ^ 



