79 



LECHEG0ANA HoNET — A dangerous kind 

 of honey, supposed to be furnished by 

 PauUinia wustralis and Serjania letha- 

 lis. This is given because plants of the 

 above genera are to be met with in 

 garden culture. 



Lepals, Lb'palum— Sterile stamens. 



LlANE — A woody twining or climbing 

 plant, like those which occur in tropical 

 forests. 



Lit, Libf, Loof— Names for the fibre by 

 which the petioles of the Date Palm 

 are bound together. 



Litmus — A blue dye prepared from Soccella 

 tinctoria and some other Lichens, by 

 maceration and occasional agitation in 

 a mixture of urine, lime, and potash. 

 A kind of fermentation takes place, 

 and the lichen becomes first reddish 

 and then blue. When dried it has, 

 when rubbed with the nail, a coppery 

 tint like indigo. Litmus is of great 

 imijortance to chemists, as it affords a 

 delicate test for acids and alkalies, 

 since blue litmus acquires from acids a 

 red tint, which is restored by alkalies. 

 I'or this purpose paper is steeped in a 

 solution of litmus, and then dried and 

 bound up in packets ; when so pre- 

 pared, it is sold under the name of 

 test-paper. 



LiTUATE— Forked, with the points a little 

 turned outwards. 



LiTORATE, Lithba'tus (From Litura, a blot) 

 — When spots are formed by the abra- 

 sion of the surface. 



Mblligo — Honey dew; a disease of plants 

 in which an unnatural secretion of 

 sweet matter appears on their surface. 



Mbmnonius — A brown-black colour ; pitch 

 black. 



MoKlA — The parts of a flower in general ; 

 . as pentamorius, which signifies all the 

 parts being arranged in fives. ^ 



Nematheoia — Warty excrescences of the 

 fronds of certain rose-spored Algae, 

 producing tetraspores, as in Phyllo- 

 phora. 



Nematoid Worms (Anguillulids)— This 

 group of microscopic animals give rise 

 to disease in both wild and cultivated 

 plants. They differ from the earth- 

 worms and other true worms, and ex- 

 hibit a much lower type of structure. 

 They are minute, white or translucent, 

 and usually so small as to resemble 

 short, slender pieces of hair, even when 

 visible at all without a magnifying 

 glass. All those kinds that cause 

 disease in plants are very minute, and 

 live in the interior of the parts they 

 attack, so that these parts must be cut 

 into, or opened, before the worms are 

 discovered. When seen through a 

 microscope, they appear slender, taper- 

 ing both ways, but the front end, in 

 which is the mouth, is rather blunt, 

 the hinder end, or tail, is usually long, 

 and tapers gradually, or it may bear an 

 extension of the' skin along one or both 



sides. There is no head, nor are there 

 limbs or organs of sense of any kind 

 visible. The mouth opens in front ; 

 on the gullet and intestines there are 

 usually two swollen muscular bodies, 

 which serve for helping to prepare the 

 food in its passage Qorniwards. The 

 intestine opens below in the anus, some 

 distance from the end of the body, the 

 tail, of varying length, lying behind it. 

 The_ characters of the genera and 

 • species are recognisable usualljr in the 

 mature animals alone. The situation 

 of the sexual openings, and, in the 

 males, two horny out-growths, con- 

 nected with reproduction, assist in- 

 supplying^ distinctive characters, as do 

 also peculiarities in the iiiternal organs, 

 which can be made out with no great 

 difficulty under the microscope in the 

 living animals. Some years ago Dr. 

 J. Bancroft drew attention to the 

 destruction these minute animals were 

 doing to the Banana and a number of 

 other plants in and around Brisbane. 

 In Europe they have been found to 

 seriously damage both the roots and 

 foliage of florist plants ; in South 

 America the coffee plants ; in Europe 

 also they are said to have done more or 

 less damage to the sugar beet and the 

 grape vines. The best mode of pre- 

 vention consists in changing the crops 

 on any piece of ground, so as to pre- 

 vent suitable food for the Nematodes 

 being afforded. On infested soil, there- 

 fore, plants liable to attack should be 

 followed by others unsuitable as food 

 for the worms. This recommendation 

 could hardly be carried out with regard 

 to trees. 



Nephbosta — The spore-case of Lycopods. 



NoDCLES — A name given to knots of wood 

 which are found in the bark of various 

 trees. They vary both in shape and 

 size, being from the size of a pin's head 

 to over a foot in diameter, and from 

 globular to so irregular in form as to 

 resemble a rhizome of ginger. They 

 are supposed to be born in the paren- 

 chymatous tissue, and at first com- 

 pletely free and isolated in the bark, 

 with a peculiar bark of their own. 

 When in progress of development these 

 nodules are brought in contact with 

 the wood of the tree which bears them, 

 the intermediate bark may be destroyed 

 by the pressure to which it is sub- 

 jected, and then the wood of the nodule 

 may become adherent to the wood of 

 the tree ; these curious formations 

 are found very large in the bark of our 

 Bunya trees and quite free. The wood 

 of the nodule is arranged in corcentric 

 zones around a common centre, and has 

 both pith and medulary jays, and how- 

 ever irregular, the form is evidently 

 in all cases a genuine sphere ; it has all 

 the elements of organisation found in 

 the trunk of the tree, but arranged dif- 

 ferently. In the Cedar of Lebanon and 

 the Olive these nodules aie often abun- 

 dant and in the latter have been seen 

 to produce a small branch from the 



