548 Short Communications : — 



botanic garden at Bury St. Edmunds, where the transplanted 

 individual, or its root-borne progeny, has (until lately at 

 least, but most probably still) flourished, and annually borne 

 whitish (white, if you will) blossoms ever since. In July, 

 1832, I stubbed up, and transferred to a garden, part of the 

 root of a plant of this variety, then very prettily in blossom, 

 in a land of barley, green, spiked, and waving playfully, as if 

 shrinking from the greeting kiss of every passing breeze. This 

 plant was growing a few yards east of the road to Ely, at 

 2± miles' distance from the town of Cambridge. 



Smith, in his English Flora, vol. i. p. 195., ascribes an in- 

 teresting property to the usually coloured blossoms of S. 

 arvensis, in these words : — " Flowers large and handsome, 

 of a fine pale purple ; changing to a most beautiful green, if 

 held for a few minutes over the smoke of tobacco." This 

 ascription is very true, as I have more than once proved. Some 

 reader, who may be a chemist, will possibly, at his leisure, 

 communicate an explanation of the process of this change. — 

 J. D. 



Sphceria {raxinea. — In Vol.11, p. 171. is a communica- 

 tion from Electricus, respecting some phenomena attending 

 SphaeVia/raxinea. This plant, which is the Hypoxylon con- 

 centricum of Greville's Cryptogamic Flora, t. 324., but after- 

 wards, in his Synopsis Generum el Specierum, p. 24., called 

 SphaeVia concentrica, is tolerably frequent, but not common, in 

 this neighbourhood. I last year obtained several specimens ; 

 and, although I then observed the phenomenon alluded to, I did 

 not make any particular remarks upon the subject; but on 

 Saturday evening last I brought home two specimens, and 

 placed them on the mantel-piece, and on the following morn- 

 ing they were covered and surrounded by the black powder, 

 as correctly described by Electricus (Vol. II. p. 172.). I im- 

 mediately placed some of it under the microscope, and at 

 once determined it to be the seeds of the plant. It appeared, 

 when highly magnified, to be composed of numerous rather 

 long egg-shaped bodies, as figured by Dr. Greville in his 

 Cryptogamic Flora, tab. 324. What electricity may have to 

 do with the matter I cannot tell, this being a subject I am 

 not sufficiently acquainted with ; but it seems to me a mode 

 of dispersing the seeds rather singular, though not more so 

 than in many other cryptogamous plants. Look at the 

 Trichiae, which at first I had much difficulty in believing not 

 to be animated ; and at Sphaerobolus stellatus, which projects 

 its seeds to the distance of six or eight inches. I have only to 

 say, that my plants of Sphae'ria concentrica have exhibited the 

 same appearance every morning since I had them ; and the 



