366 Scientific Intelligence—Agriculture. 
Robert Little, surgeon at Singapore, specimens taken from two trees 
which were cultivated there by Dr Almeida, a resident of the colony, 
and which were obtained by him “ direct from Siam” as the Gam- 
boge tree of that country. These specimens are not such as to allow 
of a complete description ; yet they are sufficient to shew that the 
plant presents the characters of Wight’s Gamboge-bearing section of 
the genus Garcinia; but that is not any of the species hitherto so 
fully described as to admit of comparison with it. The fruit is round, 
not grooved, crowned by a four-lobed knotty stigma, and surrounded 
by numerous sessile or subsessile aborted anthers, and by a persis- 
tent calyx of four ventricose fleshy sepals. The male flowers con- 
sist of a calyx of the same structure, a corolla of four ventricose 
fleshy petals, and a club-shaped mass of about forty subsessile anthers, 
closely appressed, connected only at the mere base, one-celled, flat- 
tened at the top, and opening by a circular lid along a line of lateral 
depression ; and there is no appearance of an aborted ovary amidst 
them. These are the characters of the three species presently known. 
These three species very closely resemble one another in general 
appearance and special characters. The new species presents the 
same close resemblance to them all; and, in particular, its foliage 
is undistinguishable from that of Garcinia elliptica, the leaves being 
elliptic, acuminate, and leathery, exactly as described and delineated 
by Wight. But it differs from them all in the male flowers and 
fruit being peduncled. The male flowers are fascicled, and have a 
slender peduncle three-tenths of an inch in length. The single 
young fruit attached to one of the specimens has a thick fleshy 
peduncle, like an elongated receptacle, half as long as the male pe- 
duncle. All the other species hitherto described have both male 
and female flowers sessile or subsessile. As this difference cannot 
arise from a mere variation in the same species, the plant must be 
a new one. ‘The evidence however that it produces Gamboge, and 
more especially the commercial Gamboge of Siam, is not yet com- 
plete ; and, until further information on this point be obtained, which 
the author expects to receive in the course of the year, it appears 
advisable not to attach to it a specific name. A question may 
even arise whether the male flowers and the fruit here described 
may not belong to two species instead of one; but this is far from 
probable.—( Proceedings of the Royal Soc. Edin., vol. ii., No. 36.) 
AGRICULTURE. 
8. Analysis of Svils—One objection, which is often made to the 
analysis of soils, merits some attention. It is argued, that as the 
surface of a field is changing at almost every step, when you take a 
sample from one square yard, you are by no means sure that it all 
agrees with the next. A field is not a crystallised mineral of de- 
