Scientific Intelligence. — Botany. 393 



larger or smaller proportions, most compound bodies ; and the 

 calcareous and alkaline elements of stones are particularly liable 

 to this kind of operation. When water holds in solution carbo- 

 nic acid, which is always the case when it is precipitated from the 

 atmosphere, its power of dissolving carbonate of lime is very 

 much increased ; and, in the neighbourhood of great cities, 

 where the atmosphere contains a large proportion of this prin- 

 ciple, the solvent powers of rain upon the marble exjwsed to it 

 must be greatest. Whoever examines the marble statues in the 

 British Museum, which have been removed from the exterior of 

 the Parthenon, will be convinced that they have suffered from 

 this agency ; and an effect so distinct in the pure atmosphere 

 and temperate climate of Athens, must be on a higher scale in 

 the vicinity of other great European cities, where the consump- 

 tion of fuel produces carbonic acid in large quantities. 



BOTANV. 



14. On Columba Root. — Columba Root has long been a well 

 known article of the Materia Medica, and esteemed a valuable 

 medicine for rectifying the tone of the stomach and alimentary 

 canal, when injured by such diseases as cholera and dysentery. 

 The plant grows in the countries of Mozambique and Querimba 

 on the east coast of Africa. The authorities at the Portuguese 

 settlements there have endeavoured to preserve to themselves a 

 monopoly of the medicine, and they long succeeded in doing so. 

 In the year 1805, however, a single plant was brought alive to 

 Madras by M. Fortin. This specimen grew and flowered there, 

 and was described by Dr Andrew Berry, then of the Medical 

 Board of Fort St George, now of Edinburgh. It proved a 

 dioecious plant ; and Dr Berry correctly remarked, that it was 

 closely allied to the genus Menispermum. The individual 

 growing at Madras was a male. Willdenow and Sprengel in- 

 serted the plant in their systems under the name of Menisper- 

 mun palmatum. Sir J. E. Smith, in Rees' Cyclopoedia, con- 

 jectured that it had been carried from Columbo, in Ceylon, to 

 the East Indies, and had thus derived its name. This, how- 

 ever, was a mistake, it being known in Africa by the name of 

 Kalumba. Dc Candollc afterwards determined that the plant 

 properly belonged to the genus Cocculus, but regretted that he 



