364 REVIEWS. 
ed two or three times and in different places, one in particular, a 
still pool of clear water (in which it does not flower so soon or so 
freely as in muddy water,—the first flowers I observed m the 
_ Avon were in the beginning of September, 1854) near the Avon, 
and so high above it that moderate floods do not touch it. The 
pool was full of Anacharis m 1854, to the exclusion of Callitriche, 
Chara, etc., looking solid enough to walk on; this flowered in 
the autumn of 1855, and now (1856) there is scarcely a trace of 
it: again at a lock in the river, the entrance of which was filled 
all the summer of 1854, but when it had flowered it soon disap- 
peared. Where it is frozen the whole plant dies. May not this 
be one reason for its more rapid growth in England than m the 
North American waters? Here we seldom have thick ice ; there 
the rivers are frozen every year, and for some considerable time. 
But the fact of only one sex being present is the greatest reason 
of its extraordimary luxuriance, as many of our common plants 
are seen to spread very much when prevented forming their seeds 
by the same accident, as Petasites vulgaris, Mercurialis perennis ; 
and many others, might, I think, be picked out, that behave in a 
similar manner. It is very late in commencing growing for the 
season; it did not begin to grow in 1854 in the Avon till the 
18th of March, when I found young shoots a quarter of an inch 
long; they continued to grow very slowly till the middle of May, 
when the plant may be said to have commenced its rapid march 
for the season, growing surprisingly where undisturbed till late 
in October. I have not seen that any one has given it the cha- 
racter of a sanatory reformer. I think myself there is a great 
change for the best in many of the still ditches and pools it grows 
in-here, some of which used to be very offensive to both eye and 
nose ; now they are beautifully clear, and the smell is gone. 

Kebiews. 
Poisoning by the Root of Aconitum Napellus. By F. W. Hrap- 
LAND, M.D., F.L.S., etc. Reprinted from the ‘ Lancet’ of 
March the 29th, 1856. 
This is a seasonable offering to us. ‘A word spoken in sea- 
son is like apples of gold in fittings of silver.” Virgil, in his 
warm admiration of his native country, tells us that Wolfsbane 
