100 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 



Many of these species are favourite articles of food in the autumn 

 and winter with the peasantry in various parts of the Continent, 

 and are everywhere sold in the markets. Our common mushroom 

 is among the kinds forbidden by the police regulations to be sold in 

 Borne, but is to be met with in the markets of Palermo and Messina. 



Acclimatization of Half-hardy Plants. — Great efforts have re- 

 cently been made in France to naturalize trees and shrubs — natives 

 of warmer climates ; and these have been attended with consider- 

 able success in some instances. The Bamboo, introduced at Tours, 

 Macon, and Angers, has succeeded admirably, and has withstood a very 

 considerable degree of frost. It seems likely to flourish even in the 

 climate of Paris, where it is grown in the gardens of the Societe 

 aV Acclimatation. Several species of Eucalyptus, especially the E. glo- 

 bulus, have also been planted extensively in the Department of the 

 Yar, where they have been found to resist the destructive north- 

 west wind known as the mistral. 



The Fertilization of Winter-flowering Plants. — Mr. A. W. 

 Bennett contributes to the first number of the new scientific maga- 

 zine, 'Nature,' the results of some observations on the fertilization 

 of those plants which habitually flower in the winter, when there 

 are few or no insects to assist in the distribution of the pollen. He 

 finds that in those wild plants which flower and produce seed- 

 bearing capsules throughout the year, as the white and red dead- 

 nettles, shepherd's purse, chickweed, groundsel, &c., the pollen is 

 uniformly discharged in the bud before the flower opens. Many 

 garden-plants, on the other hand, natives of warmer countries, but 

 which still flower with us in the depth of winter, never bear fruit 

 in this climate, and in them the pollen is not discharged till the 

 flower is fully open. Of this class are the yellow jasmine and the 

 Gheimonanthus fragrans, or all-spice tree; in the latter species the 

 arrangement of the pistil and the stamens is such as to render self- 

 fertilization impossible. 



Leonardo da Vinci as a Botanist. — In the recently commenced 

 ' Nuovo Giornale botanico Italiano,' published at Florence, Signor 

 TJzielH has an interesting article on some botanical observations of 

 Leonardo da Vinci, showing that to the great painter is due the 

 credit of the first observation of certain points in the structure of 

 plants, which has been generally attributed to writers of a consider- 

 ably later date. The constancy of a uniform arrangement of the 

 leaves on the branches in the same species, known as the Law of 

 Phyllotaxis, is stated in botanical works to have been first observed 

 by Grew and Malpighi towards the close of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. Da Vinci, however, who lived from 1452 to 1519, records 

 observations to the same effect, though not so accurate, in his great 

 * Treatise on Painting.' To the same two botanists is also ascribed 

 the discovery of the mode in which the stems of exogenous trees 



