General J^Totice. 195 



No. L of The Flower-garden^ by James Rennie, M. A., 

 assisted by several eminent florists and amateurs, to be com- 

 pleted in six or eight monthly parts, will soon be published. 

 It will contain directions for the cultivation of Annuals, Bien- 

 m'als, Perennials, and Green-house and Hot-house plants in 

 general. To be illustrated with plates. Price Is. each part. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notice. 



The Stumps of the Silver Fir, (X^bies Ficea,) increase in diameter 

 after the tree is felled. — M. Dutrochet, wishing to verity this tact, which 

 he had previously observed in 1833, procured, in 1835, from the forests 

 of the Jura, several stumps of this tree, which were in a living state 

 when taken up. One, which was the stump of a tree felled in 1821, 

 had thus been increasing in diameter during fom-teen years: the new 

 wood and bark being easily distinguishable from the former wood and 

 bark, which were in a state of incipient decomposition. 



The total thickness of the fourteen layers of this new ligneous pro- 

 duction was 5.669 lines, (neiirly iialf an inch,) in the vertical part of the 

 stump; and this thickness is increased to about 8.03-2 lines, (three quar- 

 ters of an inch,) in the ligneous part of the callosity, (hourrelet,) pro- 

 truded over a part of the section made by the axe. Another stump was • 

 that of a tree felled in 1743, and it was still full of life when it^was ex- 

 amined, at the commencement of the year 1836. The wood formed 

 since the tree was felled consisted of ninety-two layers, the total thick- 

 ness of which was nearly two inches. The wood of which the stump 

 was composed, when the tree was felled, entirely disappeared; and the 

 thick rim, or callosity, which had formed round the margin, had curled 

 over so as almost to cover the top of the stump. This stump, which 

 had lived and increased in diameter during ninety -two years, would, in 

 all probability, have endured nuich longer; so that we are ignorant how 

 far this singular prolongation of life and increase of growth may extend 

 in stumps de|)rived of their trunk and leaves, and which only receive 

 liquid nourishment from the roots. It results from this, that the growth 

 of trees in diameter is the result of a local development; and that the 

 organic matter of this increase does not descend i'rom the upper j)arts 

 of the trunk, as some physiologists still think. {L''Hermes, Dec. 24, 

 1836, translated into the Gard. Mag. for March.) 



