142 General Notices. 



has been used to two others, which are not so thick in the stem, 

 yet have rather longer leaves. I expect we shall fruit these 

 plants next season. I intend to build a small house to fruit 

 about two dozen every year. The only plants that I know to be 

 true of Mus« Cavendish// are at Lord Fitzwilliam's, and A. B. 

 Lambert's, Esq., and one at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Mr. 

 Cameron, with whom I have recently had some talk on this 

 subject, assures me that he never received but two plants from 

 the Mauritius, one of which was purchased at Mr. Barclay's sale 

 by a Continental botanist. Messrs. Rollisson of Tooting have 

 plants that very much resemble it; but, as there are so many 

 kinds of dwarf musas in the Mauritius, and as the Messrs. Rol- 

 lisson cannot give any satisfactory account of the introduction of 

 their plants, I am led to doubt their origin. 



By this time next season I shall have 100 plants of the M. 

 Cavendish//, part of which I shall have to distribute. I forgot to 

 mention that the fruit, when ripe, was larger than any I ever saw 

 produced by M. sapientum, or M. paradisiaca; and that the 

 flavour, when in perfection, combines that of the pine^apple, the 

 melon, and the pear. Mr. Richard Harrison, of Aighburgh, who 

 tasted the fruit exhibited at the London Horticultural Society, 

 pronounced it much finer flavoured than any kind of banana he 

 had ever tasted in the West Indies. The spike of fruit, when 

 exhibited at the Society, was rather over ripe. 



Chatsworth, Nov. 8. 1836. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



The Stumps of the Silver Fir (^A'bies Picea) increase in Diameter after the 

 Tree is felled. — M. Dutrochet, wishing to verify this fact, 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 fourteen years ; the new wood and bark being easily distin- 

 guishable 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 

 production was 5*669 lines (nearly half an inch) in the vertical part of the 

 stump ; and this thickness is increased to about 8"032 lines (three quarters of 

 an inch) in the ligneous part of the callosity (bourrelei) protruded 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 examined at the commencement 

 of the year 1836. The wood formed since the tree was felled consisted of 

 ninety-two layers, the total thickness of which was nearly 2 in. The wood of 

 which the stump was composed when the tree was felled had entirely disap- 

 peared ; 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 much longer: so that we are ignorant how far 

 this singular prolongation of life and increase of growth may extend in stumps 



