AND OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 



Ill 



C^RYOFHTLLEA Sessilis. — Primary lamelte of the star thirteen ; three lamellffl 

 of less size occupying the intervals, and the middle one predominating slightly in 

 heio-ht and breadth, and sending off from its base a thin, flexuous, and erect plate 

 or process ; all the lamella! rough with small tubercles, and more or less plaited on 

 their edoes J. S. Bellamy. Yealmpton, ist July, 1837. 



New Silkworm. It is stated that at Rio Janeiro there are several species of 



Bombyx, the Caterpillars of which inclose themselves in a cocoon, after having spun 

 a thiclier and stronger silk than that of the ordinary Silkworm. It has been tried, 

 and found to form a very solid material. A species of mulberry, of which the fruit is 

 small and inedible, grows near the city, and is to be cultivated for feeding the Cater- 

 pillars. 



BOTANY. 



THE ORANGE TREE, CITRUS AURANTIUM. 



This tree, of which the fruit is so well known in all parts of Europe, belongs to the 

 class Polyadelphia, and the order Icosandria of the Linncean system, and to the 

 na.t\xz3} fa.mi\y of Avrantiacece. It is a native of India, whence it has spread into 

 various parts of the world, and is cultivated in the warmer countries of Europe. It 

 attains a height of from five to fifteen feet, is copiously branched, and has a smooth 

 greyish bark. The leaves are elliptical but rather pointed, smooth, entire, glossy, 

 deep green, with winged or dilated petiols. The flowers are lai'ge, white, axillar, 

 and terminal, on short, simple, or branched stalks, with a cup-shaped, five-toothed 

 calyx ; five oblong, concave petals ; about twenty stamens, of which the filaments are 

 united into three or more sets ; a roundish germen, surmounted by a short cylindrical 

 style, and a globular stigma. The fruit, being so well known, requires little descrip- 

 tion. It is a mass of cellular, pulpy matter, divided by partitions, and containing 

 several seeds towards the centre, the whole inclosed by a thick rhind, externally of 

 an orange yellow, and having numerous glands or crypts containing an essential oil. 



Granges are brought to us chiefly from Spain and Portugal. In England, although 

 orange trees have been long cultivated as ornamental greenhouse plants, they never 

 produce fruit equal to that imported from the countries just mentioned. There are 

 two principal varieties, the China or sweet orange, and the Seville, both of which are 

 in common use. The latter, however, is the kind chiefly employed medicinally, its 

 juice being an agreeable acid liquor, which is of considerable use in febrile and inflam- 

 matory disorders, as it quenches the thirst, promotes the secretions, and diminis-hes 

 the action of the arteiial system. The yellow rhind, which is an agreeable aromatic 

 bitter, has been employed with success as a stomachic, as well as in intermittent fevers. 

 It abounds with a volatile aromatic oil, which, with the bitter cfntained in it, gives 

 it a pungent and harsh taste. This part is extensively prepared in Scotland as a con- 

 serve under the name of marmalade. The flowers and leaves, which are also beset 

 with minute glands secreting an essential oil, have been employed as a remedy against 

 epilepsy and other convulsive disorders, but have fallen into disuse. 



The lemon, the lime, and the citron, are species of the same family, and also 

 natives of India. The production of the common orange, Dr Lindley remarks, is 

 enormous. A single tree at St Michael's has been known to produce 20,000 oranges 

 fit for packing, exclusively of the damaged fruit and the waste, which may be calcu- 

 lated at one third more. Air Audubon found it apparently wild in Florida, " What- 

 ever its original country may be supposed to be, the plant," he says, " is to all ap- 

 pearance indigenous in many parts of that country, not merely in the neighbourhood 

 of plantations, but in the wildest districts. Nothing can be more gladdening to the 

 traveller, when passing through the uninhabited woods of East Florida, than the wild 

 orange groves which he sometimes meets with. As I approached them, the rich per- 

 fume of the blossoms, the golden hue of the fruits that hung on every twig, and lay 

 scattered on the ground, and the deep green of the glossy leaves, never failed to pro- 

 duce the most pleasing efi'ect on my mind. Not a branch has suffered from the 

 pruning knife, and the graceful form of the trees retains the elegance it received from 

 nature. Raising their tops into the open air, they allow the uppermost blossoms and 

 fruits to receive the unbroken rays of the sun, which one might be tempted to think 



are conveyed from flower to flower, and from fruit to fruit, so rich and balmy are all. 

 The pulp of these fruits quenches your thirst at once, and the very air you breathe in 

 such a place refreshes and reinvigorates you. I have passed through groves of these 

 orange trees fully a mile in extent. Their occurrence is a sure indication of good land, 

 which, in the south-eastern portions of that country, is rather scarce. The Seminole 

 Indians and poorer squatters feed their horses on oranges, which these animal* seem 

 to eat with much relish. The immediate vicinity of a wild orange grove is of some 

 importance to the planters, who have the fruit collected and squeezed in a bone mill. 

 The juice is barrelled and sent to different markets, being in request as an ingredieut 

 in cooling drinks. The straight young shoots are cut and shijiped in bundles, to be 

 used as walking sticks." 



The jVIelon in Bokhara. — There are two distinct species of Melons, which the 

 people class into hot and dry. The first ripens in June, and is the common musk or 

 scented Melon of India, and not superior in flavor ; the other ripens in July, and is 

 the true Melon of Toorkistan. In appearance it is not unlike a water-melon, and 

 comes to maturity after being seven months in the ground. It is much larger 

 than the common sort, and generally of an oval shape, exceeding two and three feet 

 in circumference. Some are much larger, and those which ripen in the Autumn 

 have exceeded four feet. One has a notion that what is large cannot be delicate or 

 high-flavored ; hut no fruit can be more luscious than the Melon of Bokhara. 1 

 always looked upon the Melon as an inferior fruit till 1 went to that country ; nor 

 do I believe their flavor will be credited by any one who has not tasted them. The 

 Melons of India, Cambool, and even Persia, bear no comparison with them ; nor 

 even the celebrated fruit of Ispahan itself. The pulp is rather hard, about two 

 inches thick, and is sweet to the very skin ; which, with the inhabitants, is the great 

 proof of superiority. A kind of molasses is extracted from these Melons, which 

 might be easily converted into sugar. There are various kinds of Melons; the best 

 is named A'ot/icc7ue, and has a green and yellow-coloured skin ; another is called 

 ak nubat, which means white sugar-candy ; it is yellow, and exceedingly rich. The 

 winter jMelon is of a dark green colour, called Kara-Koobuk, and said to surpass 

 all the others. Bokhara appears to be the native country of the Melon, having a dry 

 climate, sandy soil, and great facilities for irrigation. Melons may be purchased 

 in Bokhara throughout the year, and are preserved by merely hanging them up apart 

 from one another ; for which those of the winter crop are best suited. The water- 

 melons of Bokhara are good, and attain also an enormous size; twenty people may 

 partake of one ; and two of them, it is said, form sometimes a load for a donkey. 

 — Bumes Travels into Bokhara. 



GEOLOGY. 



Fossil Remains of Monkeys. — M, de Blainville has reported to the Academy of 

 Sciences, in his own name and that of Messrs Dumeril and Flourens, some observa- 

 tions upon the fossil bones discovered in the Commune of Sausan near Auch, by M, 

 Lartet. After discussing all the facts relative to the discovery of the fossil bones of 

 Monkeys, he goes on to say : — 



" Thus, till quite lately, it was certain that no trace had been discovered left by 

 any animal of the Monkey tribe, in even those beds which lay nearest the surface of 

 the earth, nor even in the alluvial strata, when M. Lartet announced to the Academy, 

 in a letter read at the scientific meeting of the 17th of last January, that he had just 

 found in the numerous and curious assemblage of fossil bones, discovered by him 

 in the environs of Auch, the lower jaw of an Ape, properly so called, one of the 

 grinders of a ^Marmoset (sapajou), and the anterior extremity of the lower jaw of an 

 animal of the family of Makis." 



The singular interest of so unexpected a discovery, the co-existence in the same 

 deposit, on the one hand, of the bones of the Rhinoceros, the Dlnotherium, the 

 Mastodon, the Stag, and the Antelope ; and on the other, bones of Quadrumana of 

 Asia, America, and Jladagascar, caused the correctness of his determination to be 

 questioned. A second letter, containing a detailed description of the lower jaw of 

 the Ape, accompanied by a figure, might have estabhshed beyond doubt the truth 

 of a part of M. Lartet's announcement. Nevertheless, to prove not only that it was 

 certainly an Ape which was under consideration, but moreover a Gibbon (a group 

 of Quadrumana which are scarcely known, except in the large islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago), more than a representation was necessary. M. Lartet, in consequence, 

 has sent the bone itself, as well as all those which he has thought referable to the 

 Quadrumana. 



The jaw attributed to the Gibbon is an almost complete lower one, in which only 

 the terminal parts of the rami are wanting, and it is provided with all its teeth. The 

 total number of teeth is 16 ; that is to say, 4 incisive, 2 canine, 4 false grinders, and 

 6 true ones. It is the dentary formula of Man, and of all the Apes of the old con- 

 tinent. 



The incisive teeth are equal in size, almost vertical, and ranged in a transverse line; 

 the canine teeth are short, vertical, and would meet without going beyond each other ; 

 the first false grinder is not at all inclined backward from the pressure of the upper 

 canine, and is, on the contrary, quite vertical, as in Man ; the grinders have their crown 

 armed with blunt tubercles disposed in oblique pairs. By all these characters it is 

 easy to recognise the jaw in question as belonging to one of the Quadrumana, to an 

 Ape properly so called, and to one high in the series. 



" Now," says M. de Blainville, " as the Gibbons are certainly the group of Apes 

 which ought to follow immediately after that of the Orangs, if, indeed, they be dis- 

 ''tinct from each other, we see that M. Lartet is very near the truth, so much the 

 more as the true grinders have tolerably distinct the fifth tubercle characteristic of 

 these teeth among the Gibbons. Yet as this disposition is not certainly so well indi- 

 cated in the fossil Ape as in the living Gibbons that we are acquainted with, and as 

 besides this it offers a much more evident peculiarity in the proportion of the last 

 grinder, which comes very near to that existing in the Semnopitheci, and even in the 

 Baboons, it seems decisive that the foisil Ape should form a small separate section, 

 unless we can refer it to the Colubi, which in South Africa seem to represent the 

 Semnopitheci of India. The other fragments, which M. Lartet supposes, it is true, 



