200 OONCLUDING REMARKS. Cur. V. . 
the habit of climbing. In the cases given of certain 
South African plants belonging to great twining fami- 
lies, which in their native country never twine, but 
reassume this habit when cultivated in England, we 
have a case in point. In the leaf-climbing Clematis 
flammula, and in the tendril-bearing Vine, we see no 
loss in the power of climbing, but only a remnant of the 
revolving power which is indispensable to all twiners, 
and is so common as well as so advantageous to. most 
climbers. In Tecoma radicans, one of the Bignoniacez, 
we see a last and doubtful trace of the power of 
revolving. 
With respect to the abortion of tendrils, certain 
cultivated varieties of Mucurbita pepo have, according 
to Naudin,* either t these organs or bear 
ffives of them. In my 
ire met with only one ap- 
parent instance of their fatural suppression, namely, 
in the common bean. All the other species of Vicia, 
I believe, bear tendrils; but the bean is stiff enough 
to support its own stem, and in this species, at the 
end of the petiole, where, according to analogy, a ten- 
dril ought to have existed, a small pointed filament 
projects, about a third of an inch in length, and which 
is probably the rudiment of a tendril. This may be 
the more safely inferred, as in young and unhealthy 
specimens of other tendril-bearing plants similar rudi- 
ments may occasionally be observed. In the bean 
* Annales des Sc. Nat. 4th series, Bot. tom. vi. 1856, p. 31. 
