382 Scientijic IntelUyeilca — ±juvani^\ 



the strike of the cleavage in a district is more constant and regular 

 than the strike of the beds. — {Quarterly Journal of the Geological 

 Society, No. 7, p. 309.) 



BOTANY. 



18. On the Production of Vanilla in Europe. — In marshy 

 bushy places on this journey, I saw many plants of the Vanilla 

 planifolia, seldom bearing flowers, and more rarely producing fruit. 

 It has now been satisfactorily determined, that this is the species 

 from which the true vanilla of commerce is procured. In Mexico 

 it is extensively cultivated for the sake of its fruit, which it yields 

 abundantly : while the plants which have been introduced into the 

 East Indies, and the hothouses of Europe, though they have fre- 

 quently produced flowers, have very seldom perfected their fruit. 

 Dr Morren of Liege was the first to study attentively the natural 

 history of this plant, and to prove experimentally that the fruit of 

 the Vanilla may be as freely produced in our hothouses as it is in 

 Mexico. He has discovered that from some peculiarities in the re- 

 productive organs of this plant, artificial fecundation is required. In 

 the year 1836, a plant in one of the hothouses in the botanic garden 

 at Liege produced fifty-four flowers, which having been artificially 

 fecundated, exhibited the same number of pods, quite equal to those 

 imported from Mexico; and, in 1837, a fresh crop of about a hun- 

 dred pods was obtained upon another plant by the same method. 

 He attributes the fecundation of the plant in Mexico to the action of 

 some insect which frequents the flower ; and hence accounts for the 

 non-production of fruit in those plants which have been removed to 

 other countries. There can be no doubt that this plant is as per- 

 fectly indigenous to Brazil as it is to Mexico ; but it is no less cer- 

 tain that its fruit is there seldom matured. Is this also to be at- 

 tributed to the absence of the means by which nature is supposed to 

 effect fecundation in Mexico ? This is a subject which, as Professor 

 Morren justly observes, well deserves attention in a commercial point 

 of view, since his experiments go to prove that in all intertropical 

 countries vanilla might be cultivated, and a great abundance of fruit 

 obtained.* — (^Travels in the Interior of Brazil. By George 

 Gardner y p. 296.) 



19. Phosphorescent Fungus, — One dark night, about the begin- 

 ning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de 

 Natividade, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some 

 luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large fire- 

 fly ; but on making enquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphores- 



* See Professor Morren's paper " On the Production of Vanilla in Europe," 

 in Taylor's Annals of Natural History, vol. iii., p. 1. 



