Address of the President of the British Association. 253 



by whom, indeed, this remarkably fact was first noticed. It is not the 

 least curious part of the history of the Calebogijne, that male flowers 

 have lately been discovered in New Holland unquestionably of the 

 same species. 



" Prof. Gasparini, of Naples, has more recently communicated to 

 the scientific meeting held in that city in 1845, his observations and 

 experiments on the cultivated fig, which, though entirely detitute of 

 male flowers, produced seeds having a perfectly developed embryo, 

 independent of fecundation ; access to the pollen of the wild fig, gen- 

 erally supposed to be carried by insects, being, in his experiments, pre- 

 vented by the early and complete shutting up of the only channel in 

 the fig by which it could be introduced. 



" An elaborate memoir has very recently appeared in the Transac- 

 tions of the Linnean Society, by the late Mr. W. Griffiths, 'On the 

 Structure and Affinities of Plants Parasitical on Roots.' These sin- 

 gular productions have been regarded by several distinguished botanists 

 as forming one natural class which they have called Rlrizantkea. Mr. 

 Griffiths, on the other hand, who was eminently qualified, both as a sys- 

 tematic and physiological botanist, to judge of such a question, has 

 adopted the opposite view taken by other observers, namely, that these 

 plants really belong to several distinct, and not even nearly related, 

 families; the points of internal structure and external appearance 

 which they have in common arising from the peculiar mode in which 

 Aey receive their nourishment. 



u The extension of the means of communication by the Electric 

 telegraph is yearly facilitating intercourse, almost as rapid as light or 

 as thought, between distant portions of England, and between distant 

 Provinces in the vast empire of our Queen. 



"The last pamphlet which I had in my hand before leaving home 

 yesterday, was a Report presented to the Legislative Council and As- 

 sembly of New Brunswick, relative to a project for constructing a rail- 



^ a y> and with it a line of electro-magnetic telegraph, from Halifax to 

 Quebec. 



u Distance is time ; and when by steam, whether on water or on land, 

 Personal communication is facilitated, and when armies can be trans- 

 ported without fatigue in as many hours as days were formerly required, 

 a «d when orders are conveyed from one extremity of an empire to 

 another almost like a flash of lightning, the facility of governing a 

 ,ar ge state becomes almost equal to the facility of governing the small- 

 est - I remember, many years ago, in the Scotsman, an ingenious 

 a nd able article showing how England could be governed as easy as 

 AtUca under Pericles; and I believe the same conclusion was deduced 

 b y William Cobbet from the same illustration. § 



The system is daily extending. It was, however, in the United 

 Jjates of America that it was first adopted on a great scale, by Prof. 

 Norse in 1844 ; and it is there that it is now already developed most 

 pensively. Lines for above 1,300 miles are in action ; and connect 

 lh °se States with Her Majesty's Canadian Provinces; and it is in a 

 cour se of development so rapid, that, in the words of the report^of Mr. 

 " Vinson, to my distinguished friend, his Excellency Sir VV. E. Cole- 

 brooke, the governor of New Brunswick, to which I have just adverted, 



