PROCEEDINGS OF METROPOLITAN SOCIETIES. 153 
had known red individuals to acquire again the same colour, much 
brighter than before ; he had also known them to moult from red 
to saffron, as stated in books; and now he exhibited two young 
males recently shot from a flock, both of which were exchanging 
their striated nestling plumage for saffron feathers, the change in 
one of them being nearly completed. He had also seen specimens, 
the new plumage of which was partly red and partly yellow ; so 
that there was no regularity whatever respecting these colvurs. 
The same variation, he added, was also observable in the genus Co- 
rythus, less frequently in Erythrorhiza, and occasionally in Linota, 
and he exhibited a specimen of the Common Linnet shot during the 
height of the breeding season, when the crown and breast of this 
species are ordinarily bright crimson, which had these parts of the 
same saffron hue so common in the Crossbills. He concluded by 
observing, as a fact not generally known, that fertile females of the 
genus Linola not very unfrequently assumed a red crown and 
breast as in the male, a circumstance apt to escape observation, as 
such specimens are liable to be considered as of the opposite sex with- 
out further examination. 
BOTANICAL SOCIETY. 
Sepremser 7th.—A donation of British and foreign plants, 
presented by the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, was announced by 
the Secretary, together with another donation of 5,500 specimens, 
including 420 species of British plants, from the collection of D. 
Cooper, Esq. the Curator of the Society, who exhibited some ex- 
amples of Polypogon littoralis from near Woolwich. A paper from 
the Curator was then read ‘‘ On a new principle of making fences, 
formed according to the laws of vegetable physiology,” a plan first 
adopted by Mr. Breeze, of the Nursery, Brentwood, Essex, on the 
estate of Sir Thomas Neaves, Daynam Park, in that vicinity. It 
is, in fact, a natural living fence, and consists simply of growing and 
planting, for the purpose, trees or shoots of the same or allied spe- 
cies, and uniting them by means of the process of grafting by ap- 
preach, or inarching. A fence formed on this principle possesses 
many advantages over the fence-work ordinarily employed, never re- 
quiring to be repaired, on account of living wood resisting the ac- 
tion of the wind and weather. It acquires strength every year by 
the deposition of new layers of wood, is much cheaper in first cost 
than the common fence or paling, &c. Mr. Cooper also noticed the 
variety of Polygonum aviculare, called by Hudson P. marinum, as 
being very plentiful a few weeks since in Kent and Essex, and con- 
sidered that it fully merited a place in the recent floras of this 
country. 
VOL IX., NO. XXV. 20 
