Scientific Intelligence, — Botany. 201 



40. Poisoning of Plants. — Vegetables are susceptible of losing 

 their contractile faculty, from the action of the distilled water 

 of rose-laurel, as Carradori observed : Thus, the distilled water, 

 or still more the volatile oil of rose-laurel, destroys the whole 

 power of contraction possessed by the capsules of Momordica 

 Elaterium, and Balsamina hortensis. M. Marcet of Geneva, 

 on applying an aqueous solution of opium to sensitive plants 

 and others, observed that it also destroyed the action of vegeta- 

 ble life. Whence Carradori concludes, that plants have con- 

 tractile muscular fibres, and M. Marcet imagines, that vegeta-- 

 bles possess something analogous to a nervous system, since the 

 first of these poisons operates upon the contractility, and the se- 

 cond upon the sensibility, in animals as in vegetables. 



41. Leguminostje. — By this time, perhaps, the second volume of 

 the Prodromus Systematis universalis Regni vegetahilis is in 

 the hands of most botanists in Europe ; but few, we believe, 

 will find it an easy task to study it. The arrangement, although 

 founded on the principles developed by Brown our countryman, 

 and Brown in Germany, becomes extremely embarrassing to the 

 student who has not carefully perused these, and other memoirs 

 on this difficult order. To obviate these difficulties, and to ex- 

 plain the various reasons which induced him to change so many 

 of the hitherto almost universally received genera. Prof. De Can- 

 doUe is engaged at present in publishing a separate work * on the 

 subject ; we allude to the Memoir es sur lajamille des Legumi- 

 neuses. These memoirs were originally read before the Society 

 of Natural History of Geneva, and were intended to be inserted 

 in the Memoires du Mus. d'Hist. Naturelle. Their great ex- 

 tent, and the number of plates (when complete, there will be 

 seventy plates and fourteen memoirs, forming a volume of about 

 500 pages quarto), prevented such being carried into effect,-^ 

 fortunately for the botanists who do not find it convenient to 

 take that voluminous and expensive work. We have only yet 

 had a perusal of the six first memoirs. The first is on the ge- 

 neral characters of the Leguminosae, taken from their organs of 



• Published by Belin, Rue des Mathurins, S. I. No. 14. Paris. 



