6 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



The problem, though still perhaps insoluble, has become a little 

 clearer. Pain and misery are inevitable in this world. For countless 

 ages Nature has worked by woe. But out of anguish there rises 

 advance, and pain is the parent of pleasure. It is thus that the mills 

 of God are grinding, and man cannot stop their mighty wheels. But, 

 may he hasten them ? That is the question. A question which 

 involves issues far larger than the justifiability of vivisection, issues 

 such as the right of one individual over another, be the individuals 

 animals or men. A question to which mere expedience has in all 

 ages forced from the vast majority of mankind an affirmative answer. 

 But, a question which, viewed from the peaks of philosophy or the 

 precipices of morality, must still remain without reply. 



The Northern Distribution of Oxalis cernua. 



In the recently-issued number of the Proceedings of the Linnean 

 Society (Oct., 1893, p. 31), Professor G. Henslow discusses the northern 

 distribution of Oxalis cernua, Thunb. This plant is a native of the 

 Cape of Good Hope, but has become distributed, not only on the 

 islands of the Atlantic, as the Bermudas, Canaries, and Madeira, but 

 along both the north and south coasts of the Mediterranean. The 

 first to allude to its occurrence in the northern hemisphere was Father 

 Giacinto, who mentions the plant as being cultivated in the Botanic 

 Garden at Valetta, Malta, in 1806. Professor Viviani records it for 

 North Africa in 1824, naming it Oxalis lihyca, while A. de Candolle refers 

 (Fl. Calp., 1846) to its introduction into Gibraltar in 1826. About 

 that time it probably arrived in Egypt with the mandarine orange, 

 introduced from Malta by Youssouf Effendy ; at the present time it 

 occurs there only in the orange-gardens of Cairo and Esneh. The 

 author suggests that the plant mentioned as cultivated in Malta in 

 1806 — which Zerapha states that his contemporary, Dr. Giacinto, 

 brought from the Cape, for the information of his pupils — was the 

 source of the diff"usion of the species in the Mediterranean region. 

 The floral structure of the northern specimens affords an argument 

 in favour of such an origin. While the species is naturally trimorphic 

 (having long-, mid-, and short-styled forms) at the Cape, and also 

 fruits there, it has never been known to bear fruit in the northern 

 hemisphere, and the short-styled form is the only one described as 

 occurring anywhere around the Mediterranean. Mr. Henslow examined 

 numerous plants in the Maltese Islands and Egypt, and found, with 

 but two exceptions, only the short-styled form. A single plant intro- 

 duced with some palms observed at Cannes was also short-styled. 

 The exceptions were two long-styled plants in the botanic garden of 

 the School of Medicine at Cairo, one cultivated in a pot, and a stray 

 one in the garden ; and these, it is suggested, were a recent intro- 

 duction from the Cape. 



The intercourse in trade which has long existed between Malta 



