•290 A/males des Sciences Naiurelles. 



flower, but which I am rather led to consider as two, a male and female, at the 

 extremity of a peduncle, so short as to be mostly included within the ruptured 

 spatha." — Erythroxylon coca, or coca shrub of Peru. A figure of the plant is 

 given with a description, intended as a supplement to a paper from the travels 

 of Dr Poppig, relating to the uses, property, and mode of cultivation of the shrub, 



p. 161 of Vol. i A monograph of the North American species of Rhynchosporat, 



by Asa Gray, M. D. from the Annals of the Lye. of Nat. Hist. N. York. 



No. xiv. continues and completes Mr Gray's Rhynchosporae ; 30 species are de- 

 scribed — On the Esculent Plants of Van Diemen's Land, taken from the Van 

 Diemen Almanac for 1834 and 1835, published anonymously, but due to James 

 Backhouse, Esq. A short but interesting paper, and we should like to see a 

 little of something similar introduced into the provincial Almanacs of Britain, 

 instead of the ridiculous tales with which they are so frequently concluded. — 

 Pteris esculenta, bearing the place in the pastures of our P. aquilina, is one of 

 the most abundant, commonly used by the natives, and nutritive from the quan- 

 tity of arrow-root contained in its roots, which creep horizontally, and when 



luxuriant are about the thickness of a man's thumb Agaricus esculentus is 



abundant in the island, and considered identical with the species in Europe. — 

 Contributions towards a Flora of South America, by Sir W. J. Hooker and G. 

 A. W. Arnot, Esq. continued from Vol. i. — Observations on some new or little 

 known genera and species of Scrophulariacese, by George Bentham, Esq No- 

 tice concerning the late Mr Drummond's collections, made chiefly in the southern 

 and western parts of the United States, continued from Vol. i. 



Transactions and Periodicals — Foreign. 

 Annates des Sciences Naturelles. Zoologie, MM. Audouin et Milne- 

 Edwards. Botanique, MM. Ad. Brongniart et Guillemin, 

 (From page 196.) Crochard & Co. Paris, Mars 1836. (Con- 

 tinued from p. 193.) 



1. Zoology. 

 Audouin, Concernant des calculs trouves dans les canaux biliares dun Cerf- 

 Volant femelle, (Lucanus capreolus,) adresse a VAcademie des Sciences, le 7 

 Decembre 1835 — ^On dissecting a female of Lucanus capreolus, two little cal- 

 culi were found by Dr Aube, in the slender biliary vessels, attached to the ali- 

 mentary canal. These vessels entomologists in general have agreed to consider 

 as subservient to the secretion of bile, as indeed their name implies, but some 

 peculiarities in their mode of insertion into the intestines, in various insects, had 

 led some of the most distinguished comparative anatomists to doubt the truth of 

 this theory, and to offer other conjectures relative to their functions. The cal- 

 culi above-mentioned being sent to Audouin, he immediately perceived how they 

 might be made to illustrate this question. One of them was carefully analyz- 

 ed, and it was ascertained to be composed of uric acid ; — hence it follows, that 

 the biliary vessels are in fact urinary organs. However, says Audouin, I am 

 not unwilling to admit, as Meckel had conjectured, that these vessels of insects 

 are at the same time both urinary and hepatic, not forgetting that some physio- 

 logists have proved, by a series of experiments and ingenious inferences, that 



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