128 Scientific Intelligence. 
this air in a strongly manured see contains a very large — of 
carbonic acid. Boussingault has now devised an experiment by which 
the air contained in a branch wipe an Oleander in full vegetation was ex- 
tracted. It proved to be sieeeae 88:01 per cent, oxygen 6°64, carboni¢ 
acid 5°35 per cent; being about the composition of the air from a well- 
manured soil. This carbonic acid carried into the leaves with ‘en sap, 
composed along with wa r under sunlight, must be th rece of the 
glucose (C!12H!2012) which it is the rrineipel pain of ‘foliage to 
produce. This glucose, in fixing or abandoning the elements of water, 
mes sugar, starch, cellulose, or other hydrates of carbon, which, in 
whatever part of the plant accumulated or deposited, and however trans- 
formed or re-transformed, must always have originated from carbonic acid 
and water in the green parts of plants. In closing his present paper with 
some illustrations of this now familiar view, Boussingault announces that 
his more recent experiments will enable him to demonstrate the direct 
formation of saccharine matter by the green parts of vegetables “— 
to the light. 
2. Revision of the North American species of Juncus ; by Dr. Rueaie 
MANN —_ 0. 7 = the ena — of the Transactions of the Academy 
Rocky Mountains, made during the summer per 1864. 3. And finally, 
this number of the Transactions is closed (on p. 458) with the 34th page 
of the account of our Junci, with which Dr. Engelmann has been occu- 
pied “since the end of last summer.” The sheets now before us com- 
re confident his correspondents will gladly render,—to prepare and issue 
erbarium Juncorum Bor.-Am. Normale, which will stand in oe 
of expensive plates, and will, it is believed, be far preferable to them 
ae o 
rmanorum.—A friend, who knew the botanist Lessing 
in Berlin, informs us that Chamisso dedicated this Californian plant, not 
(as we have it in the last volume of this pS p- 263) to the botanist 
