638 Foreign and Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



shew how these sheaths may be distinctly seen, so as to leave no 

 doubt of their existence. * If,' he says, 4 you take the stigma of 

 Hibiscus Syriacus, or the Althaea frutex, and compress it gently be- 

 tween two plates of glass, it will become transparent ; and the ob- 

 server will perceive not only the sheath introduced into the tissue of 

 the stigma, but may behold the vivifying particles circulating within 

 them. In addition to this fact, M. Amici asserts, that each grain of 

 pollen frequently protrudes from twenty to thirty sheaths, and that 

 each sheath penetrates from the stigma to the foramen of the ovu- 

 lum, there being always one sheath for each ovulum. ' If,' he remarks, 

 * I am asked how such a sheath is to traverse the tissue of these styles, 

 which are very long, my answer is, that perhaps when it has once 

 effected an entrance within the tissue of the stigma, it receives from 

 the tissue itself such nourishment and increase of matter as may be 

 necessary.' We scarcely need add, that it is highly desirable, that 

 these observations should be repeated by others. 



5. STRUCTURE OF THE RADISH ROOT. 



It is well known to most observers that at the summit of the root 

 of the common radish, at the very base of the stem, or at that place 

 which the French call the collet, the English the neck, is an appen- 

 dage, at first resembling a membranous sheath, enwrapping the 

 young root, and subsequently, as the root distends, becoming two loose 

 straps hanging down on each side of the root. The nature of this 

 appendage was unknown until the late ingenious L. C. Richard disco- 

 vered the existence of two modes of germination, called the exorhizal 

 and endorhizal, and suggested that the radish was an example of the 

 latter mode ; a notion which has been generally admitted by recent 

 writers, notwithstanding the circumstance, that, if endorhizal, the 

 radish would offer an exception to a very general law that endo- 

 rhizal germination goes along with endogenous growth. M. Turpin 

 has lately demonstrated that the fleshy supposed root of the radish 

 belongs to the ascending axis, not to the descending one, and that, 

 consequently, it belongs to the system of the stem, and not to that 

 of the root. In the next place, he asserts, that the tumour, which 

 ultimately becomes the radish, is in the beginning cylindrical, and 

 that its cuticle loses, at a very early period, the power of distension ; 

 in short, that it dies, and separates from the subjacent living matter, 

 just as dead bark separates from liber and young wood, in old 

 stems. Now, this premature death of the cuticle is connected with 

 the rapid lateral distension of the tumour, the cause of the existence 

 of the two appendages in question, which are nothing more than 

 two straps of dead cuticle, rent asunder by the gradual but rapid dis- 

 tension of the part that they originally ensheathed. 



6. RUSSET IN APPLES. 

 Mr. John Williams, C.M.H.S., in a paper recently published in the 



