Botany, 383 



Agallochum appears not to be derived from the Arabic, nor from the 

 Hebrew Ahalim and Ahaloth, but from the Indian name Agaru, or with 

 the Sanscrit pleonastic termination ca, Aguruca. It may be stated that 

 the Portuguese Pao de Aquila, as noticed by Rumphius, is an undoubted 

 corruption of the Arabic Aghaluji and the Latin Agallochum ; and it is 

 by a ludicrous mistake that from this corruption has grown the name 

 Lignum Aquilae, whence the gen as of the plant now receives a botanic 

 appellation, and which many authors have vainly attempted to distin- 

 guish from the Lignum- Aloes and Calambac. The generic and speci- 

 fic names of this plant are thus both drawn from the same original 

 term. — (Colebrooke in Lin. Trans, xxi. 199.) 



Origin of the Cultivated Wheat. — Much interest has been excited of 

 late by the statements of M. Fabre and M. Dunal, who affirm that the cul- 

 tivated wheat [Triticum sativum) is a variety of a grass called jEgilops 

 ovata found in the south of Europe. This grass, under cultivation, is 

 said to assume the form called sEgilops triticoides, and finally to become 

 wheat. M. Fabre says that the complete change was produced in twelve 

 years by constant cultivation. If this view is correct, then botanists are 

 wrong in supposing wheat to be a Triticum, and it must be regarded merely 

 as a sport of Aegilops, kept up entirely by the art of the agriculturist. 

 We do not see common wheat in a wild state, but we meet with the grass 

 whence it is derived. Wheat would seem to be a variety rendered per- 

 manent by cultivation. These opinions of Fabre have been supported by 

 strong evidence. Of late, however, M. Godron has published a paper in 

 the Annales des Sciences Naturelles in which he maintains that Agilops 

 triticoides is not a mere sport of Ae. ovata, but that it is a hybrid between 

 the cultivated wheat and the latter plant. This statement seems, at all 

 events, to confirm the idea that wheat and the ^Egilops are nearly allied 

 plants, for hybrids are not easily produced except between plants which 

 resemble each other closely. This would be the first known instance of a 

 hybrid among grasses. There can be no doubt that the wheat and JKgi- 

 lops ovata are congeners, and that they exhibit evident marks of resem- 

 blance in the form of their caryopsis. There appears, therefore, to be 

 much plausibility in the statement of Fabre, and the hybridization spoken 

 of by M. Godron may be merely such as would occur between varieties of 

 the species. The matter is therefore by no means settled, and further 

 experiments are required. 



Balanophoracece. — Dr J. D. Hooker has examined thirty species of this 

 order, and of twenty-six of these, both sexes. The simplest and most 

 frequent form assumed by the rhizome or axis is that of a single or 

 branched tuber, sessile on the root, whence it derives nourishment, and 

 giving off one or more flowering peduncles. In the earliest stage of He- 

 losidse or Balanophoraceae the plant appears as a cellular mass, nidulating 

 in the "bark of the root, (but partially exposed), with whose cellular tissue 

 its own is in organic adhesion. At first there is no trace of vessels, but 

 before it reaches the cambium layer of the bark the vascular tissue makes 

 its appearance. Soon afterwards the wood of the root upon which the pa- 

 rasite grows appears to become affected ; its annual layers are displaced, 

 and at a later period vascular bundles enclosed in a cellular sheath appear 

 to have ascended out of the axis of the rhizome, and to have become con- 

 tinuous with those already found in it. The rhizome sometimes attains 

 great age. Helosis seems to be capable of indefinite increase. Phyllo- 

 coryne, as well as Rhopalocnemis, several species of Balanophora, Lepido- 

 phyton, Langsdorffia, and Sarcophyte are perennial. Cynomorium seems 

 annual. The growth of the rhizome appears to be slow. 



The vascular bundles in Helosis and Langsdorffia sufficiently show 

 that Balanophoraceas are Dicotyledonous. All the genera have an adherent 



