68 POTAMOGETON CRISPUS. [Muvch, 



her, to -get Cuckoo-flowers and Gandigoslings. We often regret 

 that we filled so many pinafores with the latter flower, which 

 abounded in the neighbourhood of Devizes ; for drainage and the 

 improvement of the land, we believe, have made it far less plen- 

 tiful than it was then. Many years ago, when we had removed 

 into the north, we got a friend to send us two or three specimens 

 of this much-loved flower, as the first spring had passed without 

 our meeting with it and we feared it was not found in this neigh- 

 bourhood, which happily proved to be a great mistake. 



We could say much on such a theme as this ; but, fearing to 

 be too prolix, we will leave it for the present, and perhaps take 

 another view of the matter on some fitting occasion. 



RURICOLA, 



POTAMOGETON CRISPUS. 



Hybernaculum of Potamogeton crispus ; by Treviranus. Trans- 

 lated from the " Botanische Zeitung," No. 41. October 9, 

 1857. 



It is well known that the delicate structure of water-plants 

 renders many of them unfit to withstand, for any length of time, 

 the destructive effects of the element in which they live ; and 

 their seeds, therefore, do not always come under the conditions 

 necessary for ripening them. But their reproductive power has 

 been preserved by means of gems (hybernacula, Linn.) in a manner 

 that offers several peculiarities. In the third volume of the 

 Transactions of the Botanical Society of France for" 1856 (p. 

 350), Clos describes a particular mode of propagation of Pota- 

 mogeton crispus. On the 16th January he remarked, among a 

 mass of VaUisneria, some brownish-coloured bodies of a horny 

 consistency, formed of four, five, or six leaves, sessile, on an 

 axis of three to five centimetres in length. They were kidney 

 or heart-shaped, toothed, sharp-pointed and placed horizontally. 

 From the axil of one of them sprang a stem, which had thrown 

 out, from its rather distant knots, rootlets and leaves, proving it 

 to be Potamogeton crispus. About the middle of June, Clos 

 made the following observations on the origin of these bodies. 



