OF PLANTS DBPRIVBD OP WATEB, AND OF OTHERS. 261 



"M, Bov^, in his relation of a botanical journey in Egypt in 1829, 

 Bays, ' in visiting the estate of Ibrahim Paeha, one of his directors 

 pointed out, near the village of Kouba, a stock of a Looust-tree (Cera- 

 tonia siliqua), which he said had been planted about 300 years. The 

 tree was cut down by the French, during their invasion ; its roots 

 remained in the earth, and gave no indications of vegetation till the 

 Facha caused the earth to be broken up about it in 1826, and a well to 

 be sunk, the moisture from which induced it to throw up three branches, 

 which in three years were three or four yards high, and almost 12 

 inches in circumference at the base. Even flower-buds seemed dis- 

 posed to show themselves on the branches. Thus this stock remained 

 buried for 30 years without perishing, and probably without ceasing to 

 increase in size. This surprising fact may be placed by the side of that 

 mentioned, by M. Dutrochet of a kind of Pine, whose root year after 

 year produced new layers of wood for 90 years, without any existence 

 of a stem, M, Gaudichaud has also made known a remarkable instance 

 of the duration of life in a shoot of Cissus hydrophora, which after 

 being dried three years in a herbarium, and even after being placed in 

 an oven, furnished cuttings, by which it has been propagated in the 

 hothouses of the Museum of Natural History, 



"I have noticed that fleshy roots, like those of Pseonies, do not 

 produce tops when they are cut, except those of Chinese Pseonies. The 

 same thing occurs with bulbous and fusiform roots, deprived of their 

 buds or eyes, although others produce tops, although they have been cut 

 into several pieces. There are perennial grasses whose roots are 

 preserved for more than a year in the earth without emitting roots. 

 The same takes place with the rhizomes of many Asters, Solidagos, 

 Cinerarias, and Helianthuses, and a great number of other genera. 

 Analogous facts are remarked among succulent plants, and such 

 monocotyledons as Dracaena, Aiads, &c. I have had for eight years 

 shoots of a Cereus peruvianus, which, in the free air of a room, left 

 without water or earth, produced every year new roots about an eighth 

 of an inch long, and were thus preserved for a year or two before they 

 dried up. During the first three years these shoots grew an inch or 

 more every year; for two years afterwards they lived, but did not 

 grow. Many Cactus cuttings remain three or four years without any 

 appearance of vegetation, although the pots in which they are planted 

 are filled with roots. Shoots of Cactus phyUanthoides, under similar 

 circumstances, every year formed a portion of a stem, at the extremity of 

 the old one, and on these stems two flowers have been seen to blossom, after 

 which the old shoot became yellow, then dried, became tough, and 

 what had grown upon it gradually perished, I have also preserved 

 without water shoots of StapeUa asterias, variegata, csespitosa, and 

 Mrsuta, and they have all produced flowers ; and the same has happened 

 with Aloes, which have lived for three or four years, producing new roots, 

 and forming buds along their whole length," 



