Iviii 



ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



from the medullary rays producing new wood and bark. The 

 little patches gradually increased and would ultimately have be- 

 come confluent ; but a fresh attack on the tree, which, like Ovid's 

 walnut, seemed the sport of every passer-by, destroyed it al- 

 together. 



Mr. Berkeley brought some cabbage-leaves from King's ClifFe, 

 which were curiously proliferous from the midrib. In the ' Hor- 

 ticultural Transactions ' of 1825, Monsieur DeCandolle, in a 

 treatise on the genus Brassica, gives a figure of a cabbage-leaf in 

 which trumpet-shaped processes were produced from the midrib, 

 similar to the tubular leaves which are sometimes produced in 

 cabbages, and perhaps more frequently in Spinach. In one part 

 of the plate there is apparent something more than this, ap- 

 proaching the condition of the leaves laid before the Meeting. A 

 series of laminae are produced along the midrib, so that the upper 

 surface of each lamina is always opposed to an upper surface, and 

 the contrary, as if a number of leaves were laterally soldered 

 together. This, however, is evidently not the case, because the 

 vascular bundles of the lower side of the rib are neither deranged 

 nor increased in number. Neither can there have been a fusion 

 with axillary leaves; for though there is a series of vascular bundles 

 on the upperside of the rib, which do not exist in the normal leaf, 

 every part of the frond where there is a ramification of a nerve is 

 equally disposed to become proliferous. A somewhat similar 

 structure appears to take place normally on the underside of the 

 leaves in Xantliosoma appendiculatum, and Dr. J. H. Carter has 

 observed a similar appendage in an Indian species of Ficus. Be- 

 sides the multiplied laminae, there was an abundant development 

 of tubular bodies, calling to mind very forcibly those which occur 

 in double primroses, and extremely suggestive as to the real 

 meaning of some phenomena in double flowers which cannot be 

 explained on any theory of metamorphosis, or of the development 

 of the axillary buds. 



Mr. Bateman proceeded to make some remarks on some cut 

 specimens of Jonesia Asoca received from Chatsworth, a plant 

 which, with Brown ea grandiceps, is only second in beauty to the 

 Amlierstia. As the petals are wholly deficient, it would, without 

 the leaves, be scarcely recognized as leguminous ; at the first glance 

 it looks more like an Ixora. In some of the flowers it was ob- 

 served that two ovaries were sometimes present, and occasionally 

 the rudiment of a third. The sepals also Avere very variable in 

 number, though perhaps more frequently four. 



