440 Scientific Intelligence. 
completion ; the coarser ones may be finished in two or three days; 
the finest take as many months. The best times for plaiting are the 
morning hours and the rainy season when the air is moist: in the mid- 
dle of the day and in dry clear weather the straw is apt to break, which 
when the hats are finished is betrayed by knots, and much diminishes 
their value.”—p. 204, 
Vegetable Ivory.—This consists of the seeds of the Phytelephas 
macrocarpa; a palm-like ee but not, it appears, a member of 
family of Palms. It is now taken as the type of a separate group, 
more closely allied to the savilted than to the Palmea, Seemann in- 
corporates into his account the whole history of our knowledge of the 
tree and its useful product, from its discovery by Ruiz and Pavon dowa 
to his own personal observations, which have enabled him to complete 
the botanical characters, &c., and has introduced a translation of Mor- 
ren’s account of a microscopical investigation of the structure of the 
ivory ;—of which we give a condensed abstract : 
Passing by the tegumentary portion, “ the albumen, or vegetable ivo- 
ry itself is composed of concentric layers of a white substance, thin por- 
tions of which are transparent in water and perforated with an infinity 
of holes, the sections of so many cavities. The latter are irregularly 
, and also prolonged into arms or rae which give a starry 
appearance to the cavities, many of them being 5-10-rayed. Here 
and there may be seen a little spheroidal cavity; finally the tubes ap- 
ar to be each of them tipped with a small swollen head. Throughout 
the albumen this structure is more or less regular, offering a beautiful 
study to the vegetable anatomist. Gonextlt ly the. starry cavities are 
arranged in a quincunx, so that the interval between two of them cor- 
responds to athird. A little attention enables the observer to see that 
those rays which are terminated by a little head always answer ws one 
another. * * Itis evident that these star rry cavities sepreso 
apne This iv rory; as Morren obocemes, is nothing but the albu- 
as ivary itself. Solid as iti is, in a germination it reverts to the pulpy 
and aes condition (as was seen by Hooker in the stoves of Kew 
- and nourishes the forming embryo just like the albumen of 
seed. In its native country the still soft young seeds are 
getty eaten by bears, hogs and turkeys; and in the earlier fluid state 
it forms a delicious rage. 
— Pi: was among the first plants = Columbus met 
in northern Veraguas, where it ; 
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