introduction. It resists cultivation in a remarkable manner, sub- 

 mitting permanently neither to budding, nor grafting, nor laying, 

 nor striking from cuttings ; nor, in short, to any of those operations, 

 one or other of which succeed with other plants. Drought does not 

 suit it, it does not thrive in wet ; heat has no beneficial effect, cold 

 no prejudicial influence ; care does not improve it, neglect does not 

 injure it. Of all the numerous seedlings that were raised by the 

 Horticultural Society from Mr. Willock's seeds, and distributed, 

 scarcely a plant remains alive. Two are still growing in a peat 

 border in the Chiswick Garden ; but they are languishing and 

 unhealthy ; and we confess, that observation of them in a living 

 state for nearly four years has not suggested a single method of 

 improving the cultivation of the species. 



As to its genus, it is well known, that since the days of Linneeus 

 the characters of the genera of flowering plants have been exclusively 

 taken from the organs of fructification, while those of vegetation 

 have been rigorously excluded. This has arisen from the former 

 having been supposed in all cases more constant in their modifica- 

 tions, and less subject to variation, than the latter. No other reason 

 can be assigned for the value thus exclusively ascribed to the organs 

 of fructification. It is, however, time that Botanists should dis- 

 embarrass themselves of this ancient prejudice, and admit publicly 

 that by which they are constantly influenced in private — that 

 important modifications of the organs of vegetation are sufficient to 

 divide into genera, species which do not essentially differ in the organs 

 of fructification. 



Of this the Indian Cypripediums are one instance, the genus 

 Negundium is another, and the subject of this article is a third. 

 The structure of its flower is in every respect that of a Rose ; but its 

 fohage is not even that of a Rosaceous plant, there being no trace of 

 stipulse. The simple leaves are not analogous to the terminal pinna 

 of a rose-leaf, for there is no trace of the articulation upon their 

 petiole, which is required to indicate a reduction of a compound 

 leaf, as we find in Berberis ; neither can they be considered confluent 

 stipulse, for their venation is not what would be found under such 

 circumstances, but precisely that of an ordinary leaf. 



J. L. 



