Si 0>* THE VEGETABLE OKIGIN OP DIAMONDS, 
Jacquin's figure^ and that in tlie second volume of Eecloute's ' Eoses ' 
(number 54, countinf^ from the beginning in my edition, but the plates 
are not numbered), under the name ofi?. colllna^ is a different phmt, be- 
longing to the section Sj/sf?/lce. In Scandinavia it is restricted to the 
extreme south-west. The plant figured as 7?. coUina in ' English Bo- 
tany' is, as has been already sufficiently made clear, R. sj/styla^ but 
7?. collma, Woods, in Linnean Transactions, 12, p. 219, is the true 
plant ; it was, however, not known to Woods as British. The E. collina 
of De CandoUe's ' Flore Francaise ' is, according to a specimen from 
Dr. Kapin, exactly the R, flunietorutn of my fasciculus, but the plant of 
Seringe in the * Prodromus ' is that of Jacquin. 
R. Andevagensh^ Bastard, and R, ccesia, Smith, connect R. collina 
"With the typical canina. In all reasonable probability, it is, as re- 
garded by Koch, the original wild stock of the innumerable modifica- 
tions of the Rom alba of horticulture. ' Certissime,' he writes (Syn- 
opsis, 3 edit. p. 252) *^varieta3 est R, canuKB collinm floribus plenis, 
et paeter hanc notam, ne quidem alia reperitur." This is met with 
sometimes in Britain, as in France and Germany, as an occasional 
straggler from cultivation. There is a specimen in Sir J. E. Smith's 
herbarium, collected by Mr. Winch in a hedge on the south or Durham 
side of the Tyne, near Gateshead. 
ON THE VEGETABLE ORIGIX OF DIAMONDS. 
We have already mentioned that Professor Goeppert obtained the 
prize offered by the Dutch Scientific Society for an Essay on the vege- 
table origin of Diamonds, and we are now able to give a short abstract 
of this highly interestuig essay. 
Since Lavoisier showed that diamonds were composed of plire carbon 
very different opinions have been entertained about their origin, some 
believing them to be produced by Plutonic, others by Neptunian agency. 
Newton inclined toward the latter view, and Brewster agrees with him. 
In 1842 Liebig pronounced the formation of diamonds to be the result 
of an uninterrupted process of chemical decomposition. " Imagine 
this chemical decomposition taking place in a fluid rich in carbon and 
hydrogen, and you have a combination still richer in carbon, out of 
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