152 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [ February 24, 1863. 



The Council need not repeat the arrangements for the coming 

 season which have been already made public. The chief altera- 

 tion on those of last year is the non-admisBion of the publio to 

 the garden except on fete days and promenades, a restriction by 

 which they trust that the comfort and quiet enjoyment of 

 their garden by the Fellows and their friends will be materially 

 increased. 



The Council cannot conclude this report without congratula- 

 ting the Felk>w3 on the continued interest the Queen takes in 

 the Society and its proceedings. Constant reports of its progress 

 have been furnished to Her Majesty throughout the season, and 

 she has in various wayB marked the interest she has taken in 

 them. 



DOES APOTHEME ENTEE PLANTS P 

 Toub correspondent says he is no worse than the writer in 

 the Times, who wrote anonymously, and to whom his paper 

 was a reply ; but, after all, there are few, if any, who consider 

 the Times immaculate in any way, and " can twa blacks mak a 

 white?" Thomson's "Vegetable Chemistry," nor any other 

 book, cannot prove to me or any other man, that apotheme 

 never entered into the roots of plants, because it is a mere con- 

 jecture based upon a few imperfect experiments. A million 

 analyses would give very uncertain data after all, in such a very 

 intricate matter. How can we ever know that apotheme doeB 

 not enter the roots and get instantly reBolved into its elements, 

 which as rapidly form new combinations of fluidB ? How can we 

 ever hope to detect with accuracy such minute and instantaneous 

 movements ? and is it not presumption in any one to assert that 

 a fact has been established on such crude evidence ? I do not 

 think it is far out of the way to Bay, that there is an irreverent 

 way of searching into the mysteries of Nature, and that Bcience 

 prosecuted in such a fashion "is falsely bo called." — Wit, 

 Baxeee Smith. 



[" I return Mr. Smith's letter ; and not feeling that either the 

 writer in the Times or myself are necessarily ' black ' because 

 we write anonymously on a scientific subjeot, nor that I am 

 guilty of ' irreverence ' in believing that analytical chemistry 

 detects truths, I retain my incognito, and believe in the accuracy 

 of the published experiments of Prout, Eobiquet, and others, 

 rather than in an opinion founded upon no evidence at all. No 

 one can object to Mr. Smith entertaining his own opinion, and I 

 certainly shall not charge him with ' irreverence,' nor even with 

 deficient logic, in preferring no experiments to a few. I regret, 

 however, that Mr. Smith would not be convinced even by ' a 

 million experiments,' because conviction in natural philosophy, 

 contrary to a foregone conclusion, must with him be impoBBible, 

 and lord Bacon and others must have pointed out a wrong road 

 to knowledge when tbey told us to try experiments, or, as he 

 termed it, ' asking questions of Nature.' — J."] 



and form : it forms the third example of the kind which has 

 been recorded. 



The Calceolaria is, as is known, a scropbulariaceous plant, 

 having normally an equally divided four-parted calyx, and a 

 hypogynous corolla formed of a very short tube, and a limb of 

 two lips, the superior one short, truncated and rounded, entire ; 

 the inferior very large, prolonged in the form of a slipper, and 

 concave. The flower is furnished with two stamens, inserted 

 on the tube of the corolla, scarcely exserted ; the anthers bilo- 

 cular, the cells separate, divaricate, one often sterile. The ovary 

 is bilocular; the placentas multi-ovuled ; the style simple, the 

 stigmate pointed. Such is the type of the genuine flower. The 

 following is a description of the peloria of Van Oyen : — Two 

 flowers alike normal grew to the right and left of the summit of 

 the floral branch. This summit was itself terminated by a 

 pelorised flower, which measured, not half an inch long, like 

 that of Guillemin, but nearly 4 inches. It was not, as may 

 be seen from the figure, a dwarf monster. The calyx was con- 

 formable to the normal flower. The corolla had the form of a 



V EGETABLE TEEATOLOGY — ABNORMAL 

 CALCEOLARIAS. 



BY DB. MOBBEN, PEOEESSOB OB BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY 

 or LIE&E. 



The Abbe Van Oyen, professor of physical and natural sciences 

 of St. Trond, sent me a collection of very remarkable Calceo- 

 larias, amongst which two forms of the greatest interest were 

 carefully preserved. The Abbe truly observed that it was 

 desirable not to forget those extremely rare cases in which 

 Nature sometimes works, not in violation of her laws, but in 

 deviation, so to speak, of her moBt common habits. These 

 remarkable structures are indeed revelations, the interpretation 

 of which ought not to be neglected. 



M. Moquin-Tandon, in hiB classification of vegetable monsto- 

 sities, forms a class in which the deviation of the specific type 

 is connected with the form. These deviations are of two kinds : 

 they are either changed from one organ into another, and then 

 they constitute metamorphoses, or they are alterations which, 

 being irregular, become deformations ; or, being regular, con- 

 stitute Pelorias. 



M. Van Oyen's pelorias of the Calceolaria were produced by 

 some garden varieties of corymbosa, crossed first by pendula, the 

 resulting varieties subsequently intermingled. An analogous 

 form of peloria was seen in 1833 by M. de Chamisso, in the 

 Calceolaria rugosa, and later by Guillemin. The specimen of 

 M. Van Oyen differs from these, chiefly by its great size, colour, 



Rhenish wine-flask, much elongated, straight at both extremities, 

 inflated at the middle, the part towards the summit being con- 

 tracted like the neck of a bottle; the summit of the corolla 

 itself was still further contracted, and tapered in the form of the 

 mouthpiece of a flute, where it split in two oval openings. The 

 corolla, when opened, presented no trace of stamens, only the 

 pistil of regular form was placed at its base, and had its style 

 curved to one side. The colour is not less remarkable : on the 

 ordinary flowers of this variety of Calceolaria, the base is straw- 

 colour, and there is a red tinge visible at the inside, the internal 

 cuticle being coloured red ; the inferior lip is coloured with 

 light red, but here it is the outer skin that is coloured. Now, 

 in this monstrosity the base of the corolla presented at first a 

 yellow zone ; then a broad red band in the interior, proceeding 

 from the coloured part of the internal skin ; then came a zone 

 of pure yellow, and at the contracted part the outer skin was 

 coloured with red ; and at last the small narrow terminal beak 

 was of a rich yellow. 



The base of the bottle-shaped corolla, it therefore appears, 

 represented the throat of the two-lipped normal corolla, and 

 the conical end represented the inferior lip. The hypertrophy 

 of the bottle-shaped corolla is evidently explained by the re- 

 sorption of all the male organs. In the peloria of Guillemin, 

 which only measured about half an inch, there was, however, 

 alBO a complete absence of stamens. Is this absence the con- 

 dition of the regularity of arrangement of the bilabiate flower of 



