1866. | Botany and Vegetable Physiology: 85 
upon the fruit of the Cruciferee, which tend to throw additional 
light upon its construction, and show that it is to be regarded as 
formed of two carpels alternate with the placentas, and of two inter- 
valvar placentz, from which the septum issues on each side, and by a 
double origin. 
M. Naudin, “the most distinguished experimental fertilizer on 
the continent,” has sent to the ‘Natural History Review’ a paper 
in which, after remarking upon the well-and-long-known facts of 
the variability of cultivated plants, and their tendency to give rise 
to secondary or derivative forms, he expresses his opinion that this 
phenomenon is not limited to cultivated species, but considers it 
infinitely more probable that it has taken place in nature on a much 
wider scale than im the narrow domain of our industry ; and that 
the best characterized species are so many secondary forms, 
relatively to some more ancient type which actually comprised them 
all, as they themselves comprise all the varieties to which they give 
birth under our eyes, when we submit them to cultivation. He 
then dwells upon the fact that, variable as are vegetable forms, they 
have a strong analogy with each other, which is explicable upon the 
system of common origin and of the evolution of forms. There are 
seven or eight hundred kinds of Solanum disseminated over an 
immense extent of country in the Old and New Worlds; all are 
specifically distinct, but all resemble each other in a certain 
sum of common characters, and the view that this relationship is 
of derivative origin, he says he expressed in 1852, when he said 
(Revue Horticole) :—“ We do not believe that nature proceeded in the 
formation of species, in any other manner than we ourselves proceed 
to form varieties.” He now states his belief in the unity of origin 
and in the derivation of living beings from the same branch, and by 
consequence in a single focus of creation, whence the stocks of these 
great branches have been elaborated from a common nucleus: and 
that the multipled forms, durmg the process of multiplication in 
the course of ages, have always followed divergent paths, and that 
in consequence it is contrary to nature to suppose that species can 
be changed the one into the other, or that two species can be melted 
into one by hybridization. M. Naudin’s opinions will be received 
with respect, but inasmuch as he merely indicates his belief in 
derivation of species without assigning any physical cause, they can 
only be regarded as confirmatory of the Darwinian theory, and not 
im any manner as independently originating it. 
A remarkable circumstance in the history of Lichens has been 
brought before the Natural History Society of Dublin by Admiral 
Jones. It is the discovery of spiral vessels in the thalles of Evernia 
prunastri. Dr. Moore saw them and expressed his belief that there 
was no doubt of the fact. Spiral vessels had been found in certain 
