Botany, Phenomenon, 109 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
BOTANY. 
THE plants brought from America and the Weft Indies 
by Captain Baudin, and contained in a hundred and fifty 
boxes, are inahigh ftate of vegetation. Several of them 
have produced flowers, fuch as a fpecies of bignonia, (big- 
nonia pentaphylia L.) Its flowers, of a fleth colour, are larger 
than thofe of the cata/pa, and have the fame form. -A kind 
of tournefortia, which appears new ; an euphorbia, the leaves 
of which are of an agreeable green colour, and have a little 
refemblance to thofe of the fumach ; and, laftly, the jatrapha 
goffipifolia L.- The lait has begun to exhibit fruit. 
Among this great variety of foreign trees there are fome 
which. it is hoped may be naturalifed in the fouthern de- 
partments of France, fuch as the alligator pear (/aurus per-~ 
fea L), a tree which the Spaniards tranfplanted from the New 
World to the kingdom of Valencia, .where it produces fruit. 
Its fruit is pulpy, of the fize of a very large pear, andiis eat 
with) falt. and pepper. The papaw tree. (carica papaya L), 
There are alfo feveral alimentary plants, fuch as two kinds. 
of yams, diofcorea alata and. diofcorea aculeata, with;the 
white and red potatoe, convolvulus batatas, &e. 
Among the curious plants are remarked in particular.a 
fpecies of fern, the ftem of which is three feet and a half in. 
height and three inches in diameter, and is at prefent termi~ 
nated by two leaves more than two feet in length, and hay- 
ing very fine and equal divifions. 
The four kinds of palms begin to fhoot, and above all the 
cabbage palm. Thefe majeftic trees feem likely to become 
naturalifed to the climate of France. 
A SINGULAR PHENOMENON IN REGARD TO CREAM, 
The following fingular phenomenon is announced in the 
Journal de Phyfique, Thermidor 6th, 1798, by Cit. de Se- 
rain officier de santé at Bante This fummer I was wit- 
nefs 
