Scientific Intelligence* — Botany. 197 



except ciarsorily by Murray. The spikes stand on a stalk a foot 

 and a half long, rising from the root, and are the size of a hen- 

 egg, or sometimes as large as a goose-egg ; they consist of a 

 number of broad deep scabs which lie over one another, imbri- 

 cated, and enclosing a space between them. The scales are of 

 a leathery consistence, each of them enclosing a small colourless 

 flower, of a more cuticular nature. At the commencement of 

 the flowering, the spikes are full of clear water, which is nearly 

 without smell or taste. By gentle pressure, it comes from be- 

 tween the scales, and if it be emptied in the evening it becomes 

 in great part renewed by morning. The lower half of the scale, 

 which contains no flower, is found as full of water as the rest. 

 Treviranus, therefore, considers the inner inferior part, where 

 the scales are connected with the stalk, the place where the wa- 

 ter proceeds from. The water lasted during the whole flower 

 time, that is, three weeks, but as it advanced it did not preserve 

 its original pureness ; it became somewhat ropy, and got the 

 smell of the bruised leaves of the plant, without, however, losing 

 its transparency in the least. Dr Goppert subjected a portion 

 of it to chemical analysis, from which it results, that the fluid 

 between the scales of the spikes of the Amomum Zerumbet 

 consists of pure water, containing a small quantity of vegetable 

 fibrine and mucus ; the quantity of which last is different at dif- 

 ferent periods of the flowering time. He has also observed a 

 tasteless water in the corolla of Moranta gihhai.^Dublin Medi- 

 cal Journal, frcym Treviranus' and Tiedemann^s Journal. 



HYDROGHAPHY. 



^0. Specific Gravity of' Ice. — Osann has determined the spe- 

 cific gravity of ice at 0°, and found it, after a mean of ten 

 weighings, of which the lowest was 0.9198, and 0.9352 the 

 highest, to be 0.9268. 



ARTS. 



21. French Ultramarine, — The price of the artificial ultra- 

 marine, the process for manufacturing which has been discover- 

 ed by M. Guimet of Paris, has been so reduced as to make it 

 an object witii painters and colourmen, in point of economy, to 



