20 



KEW GARDENS. 



ble succedaneum. In one single compartment of a case are shown 

 leaves, wood, bark, ashes, and earthen vessels, all the produce of 

 this pottery-tree. Then we have a small collection of dairy plants 

 — a bottle of milk from the Cow-tree, Galactodendron utile ^ and a 

 portion of its stem ; leaves of the Masserandiiha, or Milk-tree of 

 Para, a little loaf of the milk in a concrete state, and a portion of 

 the stem with the milk exuding ; Shea butter from the Niger, 

 made from the kernels of Bassia Parhii^ with the kernels them- 

 selves and leaves of the tree. The spathe which protects the 

 flow^ers of Maximiliana regia is used as a canoe ; the natives pad- 

 dle themselves across a stream in one, and then throw it aside as 

 soon as done with. A spathe in the gallery measures seven feet 

 six inches in length, and nineteen inches in breadth. Other unex- 

 pected uses of vegetables are disclosed. Dr. Hooker has sent 

 home a pair of vegetable bellows made of the leaves of a tree, 

 and used for smelting iron by the natives south of the Sone River, 

 India. 



Many of the fruits of the Museum differ much from what we 

 expect to find them. The Nux vomica^ Strijchnos nux vomica^ is 

 a capsule like a large discoloured dried orange, containing a num- 

 ber of flat seeds which furnish the poison. The Sacred Bean of 

 the Egyptians, so often seen in their monumental decorations, 

 Nelumhium speciosum^ looks in its dried state like a circular piece 

 of over-baked pudding stuck full of * hazel-nuts. The Banksias 

 from New South Wales give the idea of shell-fish rather than of 

 fruit. They resemble a number of little oysters naturally adhering 

 around a cylindrical stick and embedded in mossy sea-weed, the 

 kernel repesenting the contained mollusc. There are pods of the 

 Cassia Fistula^ used in medicine as a cathartic, two feet one inch 

 in length, like long thin sausages ; pods of an unknown species 

 of greater diameter are two feet six inches long ; those of the 

 Entada Pursaetha^ another leguminous plant, may be seen two 

 and a quarter inches across. A. natural alarum is afforded by the 

 Hura crepitans or Sand-box of Jamaica, a plant belonging to the 

 Euphorbias, whose large circular seed-vessel, unless confined by a 

 string or wire, splits into a number of pieces, and scatters its con- 

 tents with a sound loud enough to wake a sleeping botanist. 



We usually think we know all about tea by our acquaintance 

 with its vulgar shapes of Hyson, Souchong, ^q. &c. ; but there is 

 such a thing as hrick tea, which Dr. Hooker has brought from 



