• General Notices. 419 



" Is this phenomenon to be ascribed to the instantaneous access of the 

 free air to the plant, which, by stimulating its vital functions, which were de- 

 pressed by its having been kept in a less pure air, augments at the same time 

 its proper heat, before the counteracting and frigorific influence of reestablished 

 evaporation has had tbne to make itself felt? 



" This I cannot venture to decide ; but I hope that other philosophers and 

 naturalists will engage in these researches, which, if I am not deceived, may 

 yet throw light on many an interesting question in vegetable physiology." 

 {Cowpte Rendu, S^c, as quoted in Jam. Jour, for April, 1840, p. 333.) 



The Effect of Light passing through coloured Glass on Plants (p. 301.) is a 

 subject worth deep attention, and opens a wide field for observation. Some 

 time ago I had two pine stoves darkened with hot lime and water, with a little 

 size to make it stick on. I did this to save the trouble of constantly shading, 

 and I find it not only to break the rays of the sun, but that in very bright 

 days it was scarcely necesssary to give air. The question is, whether a dark 

 colour would not be better than this whitewash ? It is well known that pines 

 can be grown faster in summer in pits glazed with dark green glass than in 

 houses covered with clear glass ; and I have no doubt but that a coloured 

 mixture to darken the glass through the middle of summer would prove highly 

 beneficial to the pine. However, I will try the experiment on one house. — 

 John Spencer. Boiuood Gardens, June 4. 1840. 



A new Cedar. — If the accompanying extracts and remarks should arrest 

 the attention of any traveller who can procure seeds, or rather cones, from the 

 trees mentioned, he may discover a new cedar ; at any rate, he will earn the 

 commendation of scientific men, if, by forwarding such seeds to England, he 

 will enable us to ascertain precisely the trees referred to. 



" From Debaree are seen the trees which surround the church of Tcham- 

 belga, which Bruce took for cedars, and Salt (at Taranta) for firs ; but they 

 resemble neither the cedars of Lebanon nor the firs of Europe ; it is rather a 

 mixture of both, with thorns (?) even more tender than those of the cedar ; 

 but its fruit resembles altogether the fruit of the juniper tree : it is almost the 

 only wood for building that there is in Abyssinia." {GobaPs Abyssinia.^ 



The place to which I imagine Gobat refers is, in Salt's Voyage to Abyssinia, 

 4to, p. 236., " a bed of chalk-stone ; and wherever this prevailed an extensive 

 grove of a hardy kind of cedar, called Tiid, flourished in abundance." 



I have also lately met (but cannot remember where, [in the Transactions of 

 the Geographical Society of London^) with the assertion, that on the " Cedar 

 Mountains," Cape of Good Hope, are abundance of the cedars of Lebanon. 

 And, in an account of the Madeiras (from whence it would not be difficult to 

 procure cones), it is said that the forests formerly covering the islands have 

 disappeared ; save that in the remote parts of the mountains we may still oc- 

 casionally meet with " a species of cedar." Were I to indulge in conjecture, 

 1 should guess the tree mentioned by Salt and Gobat may be nearly allied to, 

 or identical with, the cypress of Goa (Cupr^ssus lusitanica). I would add that 

 Abyssinia, approached now so speedily and easily, and where Europeans, and 

 particularly Englishmen, have little to fear, presents a most tempting field to the 

 practical botanist ; offering, as it does, a vegetation of the utmost variety, from 

 the tropical productions of the valleys to the lichens of its snow-clad moun- 

 tains. — W. H. W. Derby, Feb. 20. 1840. 



Beaum6nt\a grandifloi-a. — If the reader will turn to p. 236. of this volume 

 he will see a speculative notion of mine for flowering the Eeaumontza grandi- 

 flora. This old-fashioned plant is very unwilling to flower with us in the 

 stoves, and, if treated as a green-house climber, it soon gets stunted and never 

 flowers at all. This was a great favourite plant with my much lamented late 

 employer, W. Gordon, Esq., of Haffield, and we tried many experiments with 

 it there for nine or ten years to get it into flower, and only succeeded once. 

 It was among the first plants that I tried at Kingsbury, in the way of experi- 

 ment. I planted it out into a border in the orchidaceous house which runs at 

 the back of the conservatorj', and for the first season I trained it in the same 

 house. In the spring of 1839, I introduced the head of it through the back 



