No. 129.] 515 



(The Hand Plant or Manita, same plant, has no petals in its 

 flower, it has a large angular calyx resembling a leather cup, 

 from the centre of which rises up a column bearing five narrow, 

 curved anthers with a curved style in the middle, these have 

 considerable resemblance to a hand furnished with long claws. — 

 Lindley — hy H. Meigs.) 



This tree has been in the museum of Natural History for forty 

 years past, and has flowered for the first time in May, 1850. It 

 is easily multiplied by marcottes, (layers,) which form for them- 

 selves perfect roots. 



The London Quarterly Review of January, 1852, gives a re- 

 view of the existing books on the subject of these gardens. 



" Everything relating toKew indicates what a vast quantity of 

 vegetable prey we are constantly taking, by the industrious hunt- 

 ing of our employes all over the world. In George 3d's time, 

 five acres were considered sufficient to contain all the hardy 

 trees — such was the Old Arboretum. Now, two hundred acres 

 are not thought too much. In 1851, the private herbarium of the 

 Director of Kew gardens, contained one hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand species of plants, which number, however astonishing, falls 

 far short of those yet to be discovered and collected. Mark the 

 Caricature Plant, with bright green leaves, something like the 

 Bay-Tree, but marked down the middle with yellow blotches, the 

 outline of many of which bear a very accurate resemblance to the 

 human face, more or less divine. Here is the Duke, and here 

 Lord Brougham, dos a dos (back to back,) on the same leaf. 

 There is Pitt ; Punch and Judy seem the principal characters 

 on the next. That little pot plant Dorstenia, shows a curious 

 fructification. It is sometimes like a flat piece of green leather, 

 growing at the end of a flower-stalk, and is in fact a flat, open 

 receptacle of minute flowers, visible with a magnifier. It is a 

 strange intermediate form ; for roll it up with the flowers out- 

 side, and it is a bread-fruit ; with them inside it is a fig. 



" Observe the chocolate nut tree, T/ieobroma cacao, ' food for 

 the Gods,' putting forth flowers from the thickest part of the 

 woody trunk, to be succeeded by nuts in the same situation, in- 



