96 REPORT—1857. 
On the Lotus or Sacred Bean of India. By Dr. Burst. 
( Communicated by Dr. Norton Suaw.) 
This plant belongs to the natural order Nelumbiacez, and is allied to the water 
lilies, and is the Nelumbium speciosum of botanists. Dr. Buist states that there are 
three species of this genus at least. ‘The only variety he had observed in India was 
one with pale rose-coloured flowers, which when full-blown, but not open, formed 
a globe of from 6 to 7 inches in diameter. The leaf is from 14 to 16 inches long, the 
leaf and flowerstalks together from 6 to 8 feet in length. The leaf and flowerstalks 
abound in spiral vessels, which Dr. Wright says are extracted and burnt by the Hindus 
in the lamps placed before the shrines of their gods. Dr. Buist, however, states his 
conviction that the spirals of all the lotuses of India, from the Himalayas to the 
Line, would not make a lamp-wick a yard long the thickness of the finger. The 
stalks are full of air, the leaves buoyant and floating, and the flowers small, like 
the Tonquin bean. After describing the external appearance ard uses of the plant, 
the author proceeded to describe— 
1. The internal structure of the root, flower, and leaf-stems.—The stalks are filled 
with air, and in their construction care is taken to prevent the percolation or intro- 
duction of water. 
2. Repulsion of water from the leaves.—This depends upon the surface of the 
leaves being covered with a fine fur of silvery hair, like papillae, which, when mag- 
nified, show themselves in the form of a succession of beads, diminishing in size 
towards the apex. It is this structure which entangles and retains the air, and thus 
obtains a high degree of buoyancy. It is the same structure which enables the rose, 
clover, and young cabbage-leaves, young shoots of grain and grass to exhibit the 
pearly forms of dew-drops, and to repel water from their surface. An analogous 
structure performs the same function in the wings of diving birds. 
3. Respiration of the Lotus.—The lotus leaves constantly give out air from their 
surface, which Dr. Buist has not examined. He found that one plant gave out from 
a cut stem thirty-three cubic inches of air in an hour. The greatest quantity of this 
air was given off two hours after sunrise. 
On some Variations of British Plants. 
By Joun Hoce, MA. F.RS., PLS, §e. 
The variations of British plants, of which the author exhibited specimens, belong 
to three species—-two being distinct varieties, and a third might perhaps be more 
correctly termed a monstrosity. 
The first—if Astragalus hypoglottis—is a very luxuriant form of it. Several spe- 
cimens were gathered this last July among some ballast, on the side of a railway, in 
the south-east of the county of Durham. The differences in size and shape of the 
leaves, and in the number of the pairs of leaflets, as well as the generally more 
strong and upright character of the stem, made Mr. J. Hogg rather suppose that it 
might be a foreign species of Astragalus, which had been introduced with ballast. 
At any rate, it must be considered as a plant very distinct from the usual form of 
the pretty little A. hypoglottis. 
The second plant presents an extraordinary transformation of the flowering spike 
or head of Plantago major. 
Each single flower in the spike assumed a close pyramidal bunch of flowers, and 
the entire panicle also became a compact pyramid. This variety or abnormal form 
might be characterized as var. pyramidalis,—paniculis pyramidalibus densis. Smith, 
in his ‘ English Flora,’ mentions a var. “‘ Plantago rosea,” but with which this trans- 
formed plant does not seem to agree. The rest of the plant does not differ from the 
usual form of P. major. It was discovered in a meadow, this summer, at Norton, 
in the county of Durham. And the third—the Arbutus Unedo—is a plant of much 
interest to the English botanist, for it grows naturally in the south-west of Ireland. 
Mr. Hogg, having just visited the Lakes of Killarney, showed two specimens 
which he brought from thence, and which vary very greatly in their leaves; one 
having narrow leaves, a var. which he termed angustifolia ; and another with broad 
leaves, having some of them rounded at their tips, he designated as var, latifolia, — 
