350 Weather of the last eight Years, 



4t the Linnaean Society's meeting on the 6th of March, 1832. Richard 

 Horsman Solly, Esq. F.L.S., whose intimate knowledge of vegetable phy- 

 siology and anatomy Professor Lindley has recently taken occasion to 

 attest, when ascribing to a new genus in Pittosporeae the name of Sollya, 

 was the gentleman who had provided this exquisite spectacle for the grati- 

 fication of all who chose to inspect it ; and delightful it was to see the sap, 

 in the shape of a thousand air bubbles, dancing briskly up on one side of 

 the chara's stem, and descending in the same lively manner on the other. 

 The specimen inspected appeared to be an internode of a stem of Chara, 

 bounded by a joint at top and another at bottom : it was erect ; and, I believe, 

 in a vial filled with water, on the back of which the light of a wax candle, 

 deprived of its glare by the interposition of Varley's dark chamber, was 

 thrown, while the inspector viewed it from the front. Mr. Solly obligingly 

 changed the object into various points of view, by each and all of which one 

 remarkable fact was clearly apparent ; namely, that the process of circula- 

 tion was not taking place about the whole periphery of the stem or internode, 

 but in two broad opposite lateral longitudinal bands, which effect left two 

 also opposite lateral longitudinal bands unoccupied by any process of cir- 

 culation. I find, by a communication subsequently published in the Gar- 

 dener^ s Magazine ^YoX.vm.. p. 143., that Mr. Burnett, of King's College, had, 

 as early as the 17th of January, 1832, exhibited the same interesting spec- 

 tacle, and apparently before the members of the Medico-Botanical Society ; 

 and from the communication cited I quote as follows : — " The course of the 

 sap in Chara is so far ascertained, that Mr. Burnett thinks himself justified 

 in declaring that each joint or limb has an individual circulation ,• and 

 although it may have a communication with other joints, yet that its 

 motion is complete in itself. A section of a rootlet, or of a joint, shows it 

 to consist of two lateral, simple, semilunar ducts, each being the channel of 

 a current that traverses the root or joint in an opposite direction to the 

 other'; the course of the one being up, the other down. These ducts, 

 although not spiral in their structure, that is, not spiral vessels, are spiral in 

 their disposition, being twisted as it were round a central axis, and forming 

 two separate scalae, much in the same way as the * wild worm ' is often 

 scored [by gardeners, who give to their scorings the term of wild worm] 

 round the stems or branches of unfruitful trees." I may add, that, in the 

 specimen exhibited by Mr. Solly, the spiral direction of the opposite scalae 

 or ducts was so progressive, that, although perceptible, it was not very ob- 

 vious. If the spiral bands so striking on the outer coat of the nucule 

 {fig. 82.) are but a modified continuation of the stmcture which obtains 

 in the stem, the strong spiral curvature exhibited in the nucule may perhaps 

 be accounted for by remembering the concentration of structure which 

 plants, in their organs of fructification and reproduction, very frequently 

 manifest. — J. D. 



Art. XIII. Observations made in the Neighbourhood of High 

 Wycombe, Bucks, on the Temperature of the Atmosphere, on the 

 Rain and the Winds, of the Months of June and July, during 

 the last eight Years, and on the Influence of these Meteorological 

 Phenomena on human Health. By James G. Tatem, Esq., 

 Member of the London Meteorological Society. 



Sir, 

 After a summer like the past, when sickness so generally 

 and so alarmingly prevailed, it may be neither uninteresting 

 nor unprofitable to examine into the state of the weather, as 



