1042 



vine) in the spring of the year, the flow of fluid is most copious, and 

 this may not only prove that tlie vessels are unusually loaded with 

 fluid at that season, but by emptying the vessels may set up a capil- 

 laiy attraction from the roots upwards. 



The remaining chapters of this little brochure are entitled, " Nutri- 

 tion of Plants " and " O71 the cause of Endosmose and Exosmose : " 

 they will abundantly repay an attentive perusal, and we have already 

 extracted so largely that our article has far exceeded the space 

 we can conveniently afford it in the concluding number of the year. 

 The low price at which the essay is published places it within the reach 

 of every one who feels an interest in the subject, and we therefore re- 

 commend our readers to procure it for themselves. 



In conclusion, we cannot refrain from animadverting on the excessive 

 badness of the punctuation, which pei-petually renders the author's 

 meaning doubtful, and sometimes destroys it altogether : in our ex- 

 tracts we have taken the liberty of altering this in more than a hundred 

 instances, substituting commas for colons, semicolons for full points, 

 and striking out commas : in doing this we hope we have always re- 

 tained the author's meaning. We recommend Mr. Rainey on ftiture 

 occasions to trust this matter to his printer: no compositor, even 

 though a boy, in the first year of his apprenticeship, could exhibit 

 such ignorance of the principles of punctuation. 



K. 



JNote on Centaurea Jacea, Linn. By Edwin Lees, Esq., F.L.S. 



Since writing my observations on the radiant-flowered variety of 

 C. nigra I have been favoured with a specimen of the true C. Jacea, 

 from Altona, in Denmark, kindly sent me by my worthy friend, the 

 Rev. Andrew Bloxam, incumbent of Twycross, Leicestershire, so well 

 known to British botanists by his acute observations of species, and 

 observations of new plants, as well as by his useful Fasciculus of the 

 British Rubi. This specimen, I am happy to say, shows at once the 

 complete distinctness of C. Jacea from C. nigra, and confirms the ac- 

 curacy of Sir J. E. Smith in his statement that the calyx of the latter 

 is " essentially different " from the former. None of the involucral 

 scales have the black, ciliated appendage so conspicuous and charac- 

 teristic in C. nigra, but their summits are scariose, of a deep chest- 

 nut brown, at once justifying the appellation of " Brown-radiant knap- 

 weed. The outer scales are scarcely more than fringed at the upper 



