TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 73 



Sea, there is every reason to believe that it has been introduced from that region to 

 Scotland by accident. It has now taken firm hold at Culross, where it was detected 

 by Dr. Dewar of Dunfermline. 



3. Galium Vaillantii. This plant has often, and perhaps justly, been considered 

 as a variety of the common G. Aparine, with which it connects the Linnsjean G. spu- 

 riiim. It has occurred to Mr. G. S. Gibsoo of Saffron Walden, Essex, in cultivated 

 fields near to that town. 



On the Cultivation of the Silk Worm. By Mrs. Whitby. 



Extract of a Letter to the Assistant General Secretary. 



Newlands, Lymington, Hants, 

 August 8, 1844. 



Sir, — Having observed in those parts of Italy where the finest silk is grown, viz. 

 in Lombardy and Piedmont, that the winter is equally rigorous with that of En- 

 gland (nay, the frosts are more severe and of longer continuance), and having ascer- 

 tained that the silk worm is " educated " in rooms where ventilators are even more 

 requisite than stoves, thus proving to me that climate was no bar, I determined to 

 make the experiment whether the culture of silk could not be made the means of 

 giving bread to some of our unemployed poor women and children. I was not de- 

 terred by learning that a similar experiment had already been made by a Company 

 conjointly in England and Ireland, because there is a vast difference between a com- 

 pany and the efforts of an individual determined to ascertain by actual personal su- 

 perintendence the probability of success. 



I have cultivated with great success the white mulberry of the Philippine Isles, or 

 Morus multicaulis, and have a flourishing field which has fed thousands of silk- worms 

 this year and several preceding ones ; and I have in proof several pounds weight of 

 well-wound silk, equal to any that can be imported from France or Italy. 



On the Cultivation of Ferns. By T. Allis. 



In the cultivation of Ferns I find many that are of constant character ; they may 

 be more or less vigorous, but the characters remain unaltered, and the eye at once 

 recognises them ; others, again, are subject to considerable alteration, as in some of 

 the Adiantse. A. affine has usually only three digits, but I have plants in a vigorous 

 state of growth with the number of digits increased, and quite undistinguishable from 

 the allied species A.pubescens : in Newman's ' British Ferns ' Polypodium Dryopteris 

 and P. calcareum are considered as one ; with me they retain their distinct characters 

 under all circumstances of growth : I have grown them in peat beds within a few feet 

 of each other : there P. calcareum retains its peculiar hue from the first appearance of 

 the frond above ground, its greener and more chaffy stem, and its more rigid ap- 

 pearance ; and I always find that it sends up fewer fronds than P. Dryopteris, which 

 are almost always fertile : these distinctions have been retained growing in a peat- 

 bed, in common garden soil, in pots in the house, and when raised from seed. As a 

 general rule, though liable to exceptions, I find that plants which have other means 

 of propagation than from seed, fructify less freely than those which grow by an ex- 

 tension of the rhizoma, or which propagate themselves by sending out young plants 

 at the extremity of the frond, as is the case with Asplenium fahellifolium, Danaeee and 

 Asplenium Rhizophyllum, which generate a young plant near the under extremity of 

 the frond, as Woodwardia radicans, or which have young plants sprouting from the 

 upper surface of the frond, as is the case with Asplenium viviparum ; on the other 

 hand, Aspidium bulbiferum is an exception to this rule : this plant bears an ample 

 crop of little bulbs, which fall off and germinate freely like the little black tubers from 

 the tiger lily, while at the same time the frond is covered on the under side with spo- 

 rules. Asplenium viviparum and Woodwardia radicans have never fructified in my 

 possession. Another instance occurs in Aspidium Thelypteris. We have one locality 

 in this neighbourhood where it grows under wood in an open peaty soil, and where 

 we may find it scattered over acres and scarcely find a single fertile frond ; in another 

 locality, where the rhizoma has not so free a range, it fructifies freely, and in my own 



