352 



and had been put into a pot among mould and leaves. It had burst 

 the volva and pushed up its stipe and pileus to the height of several 

 inches in the course of the night. 



He also showed a specimen of Babel bark, imported from Calcutta, 

 for the purpose of tanning. He next showed a specimen of coffee, 

 covered with what is technically called parchment, or the thin, brittle 

 covering which is spread over the seed within the pulpy part of the 

 fruit. Coffee was occasionally imported in this state with the view 

 of being cleaned and winnowed in this country, but it was not found 

 profitable. He also exhibited a specimen of a species of Mespilus, 

 destroyed by the attack of a moth of a gregarious nature. He then 

 read extracts fi-om a letter from Dr. R. C. Alexander, dated Naples, 

 21st June, 1845. " I arrived here" Dr. A. writes, "about the middle 

 of November, and had time before the winter set in, to collect a good 

 deal, and to get acquainted with the beautiful scenery round Naples. 

 In the north of Europe people talk of the south of Italy as though 

 there were perpetual spring here during the colder months. There 

 never was a greater error. I have known frosts as severe at night as 

 I have ever witnessed in England, though certainly the mid-day sun 

 soon restored the usual appearance of things. But besides such occa- 

 sional pinches, there was a continuance of cold, damp, wretched 

 weather till the end of March, now and then a brilliant day or two, 

 but nothing like spring. Many of the shrubs came into blossom and 

 made a brilliant show, — the splendid Lithospermum rosmarinifolium, 

 Cytisus triflorus, ramosissimus, laniger and infestus. Erica arborea, 

 Passerina hirsuta, Daphne collina, Teucrium fruticans, Anagyris 

 foetida, &c. Still it was so completely winter that I started for Pa- 

 lermo, and spent two months, April and May, in Sicily. Prof. Tineo 

 showed me every possible kindness, and what with good advice as to 

 localities and pretty fair weather, I collected 270 species that I had 

 never before seen growing. Few enough, you will think, for the two 

 best months of the year, in so rich an island as Sicily. But in that, 

 too, we northerns are under a delusion. A v^ast number of the species 

 in catalogues are only other names for our own plants. When I ask 

 the Professors and the resident botanists, to point me out any diffe- 

 rence between their plant and the similar one of the north, they usually 

 laugh, and tell me it is a ' Permesso del nostro Giovanni :' — our good 

 friend John has amused himself with making a new species of an old 

 one. Then from the mildness of the climate there is something blos- 

 soming all the twelve months of the year, and adding to the catalogue, 

 while the foreign botanist can only devote a few weeks to herborizing 



