BOTANICAL NEWS. 189 
The genus Villarsia counts in Australia 18 species, many of which afford 
excellent characters in their fruit. It is in many respects allied to Velloya, 
among Goodeniacec. enyanthes differs solely in the simply valvate æsti- 
vation of the wingless lobes of the corolla, and in trisected leaves. 
Melbourne, March 29, 1868. FRED. VON MUELLER. 
Discoloration of the Arctic Sea. 
I read Mr. Brown’s paper “ On the Discoloration of the Arctic Sea” (Jour- 
nal of Botany, 1868, p. 76) with much interest. It is valuable and suggestive. 
There are no plants on the land, and no animals in the sea, that have such a 
its distribution. On land, as we proceed from the equator towards the poles, 
the soil becomes more “ stingy” and the land more barren, but in the sea abun- 
dance is marvellous everywhere. à 
3, Belsize Square, N.W., 12th March. M. F. Maury. 
BOTANICAL NEWS. 
A paper by Mr. B. Clarke, “ On the Production of Varieties by Pruning,” 
etc., has been read before the Linnean Society. The author infers, from expe- 
riments he has made, that a peculiarity in the growth of a plant produced by 
pruning is, in some degree, communicated to the offspring of the first year; 
that by repeated pruning, always in precisely the same mode, a new variety is 
soon produced ; that the variety, being produced, cannot perhaps be kept up 
without the aid of pruning; but that, in the case of Indian Corn, there would 
be no difficulty in keeping up the variety, because the agriculturist could set 
apart a portion of his crop for seed annually, and prune that part of it in the 
advisabl , which is supposed to be removing the male flowers of 
every other plant in a row some time before flowering, but at a period which 
i i posed for the increase of the produc- 
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plants left for the purpose of effecting fertilization had the upper half or two- 
thirds of the male inflorescence removed before the flowers opened, the variety, 
