April 1, 1SC5.] 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



S9 



vitli curious mosses and fungi, wliile in spring the 

 delicious odour — 



"As the Lirch hath hung all its tassels forth/' 



exhaled, not only by the larch buds, but by occa- 

 sional violets and primroses, gives the seclusion of the 

 grove a perpetual charm. 



But we would now di- 

 rect attention to the 

 subject of our engraving, 

 which are some larch 

 cones of a previous year, 

 developed into branches, 

 which may soon be seen 

 l)udding into leaves, 

 and growing like other 

 branchlets on the tree. 

 With regard to these 

 curious productions, we 

 may conclude that ac- 

 cording to the theory of 

 arrested development, 

 the original cone was 

 formedfrom the elements 

 of abranch or twig, which 

 after the cone was formed got a new impetus of 

 growth, and developed the branch at the termination 

 ofthecone. In this cone, then, we may view the whole 

 of the multiple flower of the larch as so many whorls 

 of modified leaves, which, being no longer arrested, 

 have resulted in the elongation of the whole into an 

 abnormal branch, with all the elements of a fruit 

 and branch united. This sometimes occurs with 

 other coniferse, more particularly the spruce, but in 

 the latter it is seldom that the branch is so thoroughly 

 perforated. — /. B. 



BuooM-EAPE IN A Stkange Place. — I have found 

 the lesser broom-rape {Orobcmche minor), a curious 

 parasitical plant, with purple stem and light-brown 

 flowers, on many of the walls of the castles of 

 Wales and Monmouthshire,- which seems a curious 

 habitat for it, since it is supposed to grow only on 

 the roots of other plants, as the clover, &c. ; and as 

 its seeds are not winged, it seems difficult to account 

 for its location there. I gathered this plant on the 

 top of Martin's Tower, Chepstowe Castle, in 1839. 

 • — Hdioiii Lees. 



TuuFFLEs. — Truiiles are found in several parts of 

 the South Downs. The only ones I have eaten were 

 grown at Lord Gage's, at Eirle Place. His lord- 

 ship informed me he had never found them except 

 under the shade of beech-trees in his park. They 

 are also found in Stanmer Park, and in the beech- 

 woods of West Sussex. They are usually hunted 

 by dogs, which so much affect this delicacy that 

 they can only be bribed into giving it up to the 

 hunter by a bit of raw meat. In Cartwright's 



" History of the Rape of Bramber," 1830, p. 73, is 

 the following statement :—" The beech-woods in 

 this parish (Patching) are very productive of the 

 truffle. About forty years ago {circa 1790), Wm. 

 Leach came from the West Indies with some dogs 

 accustomed to hunt for truffles, and proceeding along 

 the coast from the Land's End to the mouth of the 

 Thames, determined to fix on the spot where he 

 found them most abundant. He took four years to 

 try the experiment, and at length settled in this 

 parish, where he carried on the busiuess of truffle- 

 hunter till his death." Pigs are occasionally used 

 for truffle-hunting. — Marh Antony Lower, in Notes 

 and Qiceries. 



The Walnut {Juglans regia). — In the south of 

 England the walnut is a very common tree, not only 

 in pleasure-grounds and gardens, but by the wayside 

 in retired villages, as at Tickenham, Somersetshire, 

 and ripens its dainty fruit every year freely and 

 abundantly. In the north it is rather rare, and 

 found chiefly near old halls, and other residences of 

 note, and the fruit cannot be depended upon. 

 Paised from seed, it begins to bear at ten years old, 

 and every year, as it approaches maturity, it increases 

 in productiveness. The tap-root is unusually strong, 

 and gives the tree a powerful anchorage, so that it 

 is less liable to be torn up by tempests than any 

 other. There is good reason to believe that this 

 tree has been in England since the time of the 

 Romans, from whom it received the name of 

 Juglans, or Jupiter's nut, in contradistinction to 

 acorns and beechmast. — Grlndon's British and 

 Garden Botany. 



Reprobtjction in Perns. — In ferns and their 

 allies the result of germination is the production of 

 a cellular expansion of various forms, whether glo- 

 bose or scale-like or iiTCgular, whether more or less 

 dilFcrentiated and distinct from the spore itself, or 

 confiuent with it externally or internally or both, on 

 which or within the substance of which, at least in 

 the more normal cases, two organs are produced of 

 different sexes, the one of which, called an "arche- 

 gonium," consists of a pitcher-shaped cyst, within 

 which there is a single free cell at the base, which 

 is destined, after impregnation, to produce, first an 

 embryo, and then, by continued development, a 

 perfect plant like the parent; which either once 

 only, or annually through a shorter or longer suc- 

 cession of years, gives rise to fruit, consisting of a 

 sporangium filled with spores, destined after germi- 

 nation to go through the same circle of phenomena. 

 In some cases two different kinds of spores are pro- 

 duced, one of which gives rise to the male, the other 

 to the female organs. — Berkeley's Bandboolz of 

 British Mosses. 



