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XXXIX. On a Gall gathered in Cuba by W. S. Macreay, Esq., upon vind 
of a Plant belonging to the Order Ochnaceæ. By the Rev. M. J. BERKELEY, 
M. A., F. L. S. 
Read April 16th, 1839. 
IN following out any branch of natural history, the attentive student is con- 
stantly struck with the host of unexpected analogies which meet him on every 
side. He is not surprised to find a complicated network of relations, whether 
of analogy or affinity, in his own particular department, but though his know- 
ledge out of that is but superficial, he is astonished at observing how many 
analogies present themselves, which at first, perhaps, he is inclined to think 
fanciful or scarcely worth notice, but their number and importance increase 
on him so fast, that at length he is forced to acknowledge the fact, that pecu- 
liarities of form, structure, colouring, &c. are represented by similar peculiari- 
ties in other apparently but little related orders. 
It is most curious, for instance, to find the different organs of which the 
more perfect plants are composed represented by various minute Algz and 
Fungi, a circumstance, to which, perhaps, is owing the great success which 
has attended the physiological researches of various close observers or students 
of Cryptogamic plants, as Link, Mirbel, Mohl, Meyen, &c., and which has 
caused Agardh*, in perhaps rather too exclusive terms, to call the attention 
of all inquirers into the more intimate structure of phænogamous plants to his 
own favourite department of science t. 
* Agardh, Organographie der Pflanzen, p. 101, note. 
t As an instance of this, the analogy between the helices of spiral vessels and the flocci or sporidia 
of Helicomyces, Helicosporium and Helicotrichum, pointed out by Kunze in his Mycologische Hefte, may 
be mentioned. It might be objected, that the articulations of the plants in question differ from any- 
thing in spiral vessels; but it is very curious that Meyen (Neues Syst. Pflanz. Phys. vol. i. tab. 4. fig. 8.) 
has lately discovered articulated helices in the cells of Oncidium mazimum. Here an analogy recog- 
nized between the fungi in question and the helices of spiral vessels might, if considered attentively, 
have been an index of the probability of the existence of articulated helices in some phænogamous 
