SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. 51 



floras are still very imperfectly known ; so much, however, of Mascarene 

 botany is known, as to show that its relations with those of the Seychelle 

 group and Madagascar, and the relations of all these with India and Africa, 

 are most complicated, and present one of the most puzzling problems in 

 Phytogeographical Science. 



Empetrum nigrum, L. — In reply to the Hon. J. L. Warren's inquiry 

 (p. 7), concerning this plant, allow me to say that I find it tolerably abun- 

 dant on Cannock Chase, Staft'ordshire. Cannock Chase is mostly a wild flat 

 moorland, with only one or two slight elevations. Enipetruni also grows 

 on Sutton Coldfield, generally, here by ninning streams ; both these stations 

 are recorded by Purton in his ' Midland Flora' (1818). I also find an- 

 other truly montane plant in both these localities, — Vucchiium Vitis-Idcea^ 

 — rather plentiful and of vigorous growth on Cannock Chase, and scat- 

 tered and more stunted in habit on Sutton Coldfield. In the marshes of 

 Cannock Chase and the bogs of Sutton Vaccinium Oxycoccus occurs. I 

 have no doubt that at one time all the country between Cannock and 

 Sutton has been one large moorland. At Sutton, too, I find two Mosses 

 which may be considered as truly montane species, viz. Amblyodon' deal- 

 batus and Hypnum commututum, var. condensatum. — James Bagnall. 



The First Synthesis of a Vegetable Alkaloid has just been 

 announced by Dr. Hugo Schifl^, of Florence (' Reports of the Berlin Che- 

 mical Society,' vol. iii. p. 94G). When alcoholic ammonia acts at a tem- 

 perature not above 100° C, on butyraldehyd, two bases are produced, — 

 one, dibutyraldine, having the following composition : — 



CgHxyNO = SC^HgO -f NH3 - HjO. 



Dibutyraldine. Butyraldehyd. 



By the dry distillation of dibutyraldine there is produced, among other 

 products, a final one, which is found to possess all the characteristic pro- 

 perties of — in fact, to be identical with — conia, the active principle of 

 Hemlock (^Conium macnUttam) . The reaction takes place as follows : — 

 CgHi^NO = H2O + CgHigN. 



Dibutyraldine. Conia. 



— Walter Flight. 



Xanthium spinosum. — Mrs. Sankey, of Dover, has recently sent me 

 a specimen of this plant gathered at Beckley, about twelve miles from 

 Hastings, in a hop-garden. — W. W. Saunders. 



Vegetable Broom-materials. — The diff'erent vegetable-materials 

 employed for making brooms and brushes are often the objects of inquiry, 

 though they have been pretty well ascertained. Brooms used for sweeping 

 the streets, and also coarse scrubbing-brushes, are made with Piassaba 

 fibre, which consists of the detached iibro-vascular bundles at the base of 

 the petioles of a Brazilian Palm {Attalea fmiifera, Mi.), forming what is 

 technically called the reticulum. A finer fibre is obtanicd from another 

 Palm, Leopoldinia Piassaba. Softer scrubbing-brushes are made of Cocoa- 

 nut fibre, the "coir" of commerce. Carpet brooms and some kinds of 

 clothes brushes are made of the panicles of the Broom-corn {Sorghum 



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