Makch 1, 1865.1 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



67 



Buckinghamshire Flora. — Mr. James Britten 

 is collecting notes for a Flora of Buckinghanisliire. 

 Any communications relative to the plants of this 

 county may be addressed to 18, Shawfield-street, 

 Chelsea, S.W. 



Male Fern as an Anthelmintic— (In reply to 

 A. B.) — The dose of recently prepared powder is 

 from one to three drachms — of oil, or ethereal ex- 

 tract, from half a drachm to a drachm, in the form 

 of electuary, emulsion, or pills. — Fereim's Materia 

 Medica. It is not our province to give prescrip- 

 tions. We believe that the gree?i fronds are used 

 for. packing. 



Fiji Islands Flora.— The first part of Dr. B. 

 Seemann's " Flora A^itiensis," or Flora of the Fiji 

 Islands, has just appeared. 



Mosses Accumulating Soil.— In March, 18i3, 

 I took from the tiled roof of an outbuilding, at 

 Malvern Wells, a tuft of Bryum capiUare, a moss 

 very common on walls and rocks. This tuft, with 

 the black soil collected at its base, weighed six 

 ounces, and on carefully extracting the mould by 

 repeated washings, the actual vegetation that re- 

 mained did not amount in weight to one ounce ; the 

 moss having thus, on a bare surface of tile, upon 

 which it had been cast by wind or rain, not only 

 subsisted itself, but amassed by its retentive quali- 

 ties, a rich humus, above five times its own weight. 

 — Ediv'm Lees' Botanical Look-out. 



Intkoduced Plants. — I quote the following from 

 the current number of a Lincolnshire paper: — ' 

 " Nearly all the favourite flowers in England are 

 exotics : the honeysuckle and hawthorn are from 

 America; the daffodil, from Italy; the foxglove, 

 from the Canaries ; asparagus, from Asia ; the goose- 

 berry, from Flanders ; and the raspberry, from Ame- 

 rica; the hop-plant came from the Netherlands." 

 Seeing that the hawthorn and honeysuckle are both 

 mentioned by Chaucer, who died in 1400, and that 

 the discovery of America by Columbus dates 1492, 

 we must either suppose that the father of English 

 poetry had a marvellous insight into the future, or 

 that the editor of the newspaper has fallen into 

 error. The other statements do not requhe com- 

 ment.— 5. 



Gemmae oe Mosses. — Will you inform me what 

 is among botanists understood to be the function of 

 the so-called gemmse of Tetraphis pellucida and 

 Aulacomnion androgynum? Few will have long fol- 

 lowed the search for and examination of mosses 

 without meeting with these mteresting species. 

 The beautiful golden baskets filled with bright green 

 apples, that at this season ornament the one, and 

 the bunches of pears that, grouped together on a 

 slender stem, adorn the other, are, under a micro- 

 scope with a low power, among the prettiest of 

 vegetable things. Are these apples and pears of 

 the nature of seeds, spores, off-sets, or really buds ? 

 for, surely, they are not, as some have suggested, 

 only rudimentary leaves.— C. F. W. [They are ge- 

 : nerally regarded as reproductive buds, analogous to 

 the bulbels of some flowering plants ; their function 

 being, within certain Umits, the perpetuation of the 

 species. In TetrapJiis pellucida they arise from the 

 centre of abortive female flowers. Of a similar 

 character are the threads produced on the leaves of 

 some species of Orthotrlchum and the granules of 

 Fottia caoifolia. — Ed. S. G.\ 



Cluster-cups. — If we take a stroll away from the 

 busy haunts of men, though only for a short dis- 

 tauce,— say, for example (if from London), down to 

 New Cross, — and along the slopes of the railway- 

 cutting, we shall be sure to find the plant called the 

 goatsbeard {Tragopogon pratensis) in profusion. In 

 May or June the leaves and unopened involucres of 

 this plant wdll present a singular appearance, as if 

 sprinkled with gold-dust, or rather, being deficient 

 in lustre, seeming as though some fairy folk had 

 scattered over them a shower of orange-coloured 

 chrome or turmeric powder. Examine this singular 

 phenomenon more closely, and the poetry about the 

 pixies all vanishes ; for the orange powder will be 

 seen to have issued from the plant itself. A pocket- 

 lens, or a Coddington, reveals the secret of the 

 mysterious dust. Hundreds of small orifices, like 

 little yellow cups, with a fringe of white teeth 

 around their margins, will be seen thickly scattered 

 over the under-surface of the leaves. These cups 

 (called fflm(^^Vc) will appear to have burst through 

 the epidermis of the leaf and elevated themselves 

 above its surface, with the lower portion attached 

 to the substratum beneath. In the interior of these 

 cup-like excrescences, or peridia, a quantity of the 

 orange-coloured, spherical dust remains, whilst 

 much of it has been shed and dispersed over the 

 unoccupied portions of the leaves, the stems, and 

 probably on the leaves of the grass or other plants 

 growing in its immediate vicinity. These httle_ cups 

 are fungi, the yellow dust the spores or ultimate 

 representatives of seed. — Bust, Smut, Mildew, and 

 Mould. 



The Pinguicula [P. grandijlora). — What 

 prompts me to write a brief description of this re- 

 markable little plant is the feeling that it is, pro- 

 bably, not very well known to most of my readers. 

 On account of its local habits, I was at fii-st under 

 the impression that it grew only in the bogs of the 

 south of Ireland, where I have seen it fiourish in 

 great luxuriance. I noticed it later in the Gap of 

 Dunloe, near the Lakes of Killarney. And I find 

 by personal obsei-vation that it attains almost as fine 

 a growth on some of the mountain-side morasses of 

 Wales, especially in the district of the lead mines 

 in Radnorshire and Cardiganshire. It always in- 

 habits boggy or peaty soils that_ have a constant 

 supply of moisture. When walking in any of its 

 habitats, a flat circular tuft of glossy light yellow 

 leaves is sure to meet the eye even of a very careless 

 observer. It has a small fibrous root, which does 

 not penetrate far into the soil. It flowers about the 

 beginning of summer. At this season there spring 

 from the centre of the tuft sis or seven slender up- 

 right stalks, varying from two to three inches in 

 height. These support flowers, in shape much like 

 the common garden nasturtium, but about the size 

 of a large violet, and of a rich purple colour. The 

 leaves, which are very juicy, are said by the peasants 

 to be poisonous to sheep. The Pinguicula derives 

 its name, probably, from the Latin adjective pinguis, 

 fat, tila being a diminutive termination, on account 

 of its succulent leaves. It is called grandiflora, to 

 distinguish it from another and smaller pinguicula, 

 which bears pale pink flowers. I have tried several 

 means of keeping the plant alive, by transporting 

 with it a qiiantitv of its native soil, and by giving it 

 a continual supply of moisture ; but this and every 

 other plan of mine has failed, yet I have not given 

 up allliopes of preserving it away from its native 

 marshes. 



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