in Bougainvillea glabra coul Testudiiiaria elephautipes. 123 



As I liave alread}' said, tlie component cells of the ducts 

 in Tcstudinaria are fully half an inch in length. The 

 parenchyma-cells immediately surrounding them are com- 

 paratively short (about -^^q of an inch), from which it is 

 evident that the duct-cells must have been formed long 

 before the adjacent cells had ceased to multiply by 

 division. 



In the ducts of the two plauts above referred to, we have 

 what appears to be a very exceptional, if not hitherto 

 unknown, peculiarity, viz., the occurrence of imperforate 

 septa : indeed, in Testuclinaria the technical character of a 

 duct as a cell-fusion is altogether absent. Something 

 similar to the structure in Bougainvillea is, however, de- 

 scribed by Sanio (" Bot. Zeitung," 1863, p. 123) as occurring 

 in an Avicennia. He says " either the wide vessels of this 

 plant, which form the greater part of the wood, exhibit as 

 perforation a large hole sharply defined from the rest of the 

 transverse partition, or this hole is covered across by a 

 membrane which exhibits bordered open pitting of the 

 most varied kind" [" die verschiedenartigste hehofte offene 

 Tiijjfcluyig"]. In this description Sanio seems to view the 

 pits as perforations — but it may be that the case is iden- 

 tical with what I have described in Bougainvillea. 



Report on Temperatures and Open Air Vegetation at the 

 Royal Botanic Garden, Ec^inhurgh, from November 

 1879 till July 1880. By Mr John Sadler, Curator. 



In my last report, I stated that the winter of 1878-79 

 was the most severe and protracted that had been ex- 

 perienced for many years. From the beginning of Novem- 

 ber 1878 to the middle of February 1879 the ground was 

 frozen to such an extent that no cultivation or transplanting 

 could be carried on, the frost having entered the ground to 

 the depth of 18 inches. The winter of 1879-80 was also 

 very severe, and the hard frosts at the beginning of Decem- 

 ber did much injury to vegetation at the Royal Botanic 

 Garden. This arose, I believe, from the unripened nature 

 of the w^ood, owing to the summer and autumn of 1879 

 being cold, wet, and sunless (see p. 128). 



