Natural History. 425 



3. Peculiar Cultivation of Potatoes. — A French soldier placed 

 half a dozen potatoes at the bottom of a cask upon a layer of sand 

 and fresh earth, three or four inches thick ; when the stalks had 

 risen a few inches, he bent them down and covered them, four or 

 five inches deep, with the same mixture. He continued this opera- 

 tion until the cask was full. Six or seven months after, upon 

 emptying the vessels, (which stood in a court-yard,) he found 

 that the half dozen of potatoes had produced an enormous quantity 

 of new ones from the portions of the mother stems which had been 

 successively laid down and covered. — Jour, des Connais. Usuelles, 

 1829, p. 66. 



4. Curious Phenomenon in Vegetable Physiology. — M. Alix, of 

 St. Valery, near Somme, has in his possession an apple-tree thfc 

 source of which is unknown, and the age supposed to be forty 

 years. This tree, which perfectly resembles the ordinary apple- 

 tree in its leaves, and the disposition of its flowers, differs by the 

 flowers being deficient of petals and stamina, but possessing in- 

 stead fourteen styles and a calix with ten segments, connected 

 below, but disposed in two alternate ranges. The peduncle of the 

 flower is woolly, and the styles, being slightly hairy at the base, are 

 surmounted by a very viscid oblique stigma. In consequence of 

 the organization of these flowers, the tree was sterile, until, it hav- 

 ing been suggested that artificial fecundation could be effected by 

 means of pollen taken from other apple-trees, the tree was made 

 to produce fruit. Since then, it has become a sort of festival in the 

 country to render the tree productive ; and those of the neighbour- 

 hood who feel an interest in the progress of the tree, when it comes 

 into flower, so soon as they meet with a perfect apple flower else- 

 where in fine dry weather, they pluck it and apply it to one of the 

 flowers of the sterile tree, and leave it there until it falls off; then 

 the person distinguishes the flower by attaching a coloured ribbon 

 to it, so that in the autumn each may know his apple. 



The apples differ much from each other in their size, taste, and 

 colour, because of the variety in the trees from which the perfect 

 flowers were taken ; but they are all distinguished by a degree of 

 contraction, situated nearly about one-third from the end. Within 

 each apple are fourteen cells, situated in two horizontal and parallel 

 planes ; five of these are disposed as in the ordinary apple, in the 

 middle of the fruit ; but the other nine, which are smaller, are 

 nearer to the top of the apple. Each cell does not always contain 

 a seed ; the number of the latter varies from three to nine. The 

 arrangement of these cells has some analogy with the appearance 

 which two apples would present if fastened end to end, and of 

 which the longitudinal section would present the figure of a leaf 

 in the shape of a violin or panduriform. 



Wildenow, Poiret, and others, have described unisexual apple- 



