KEW GARDENS. 



17 



* frequently be found wild in the neighbourliood of nunneries.' — 

 We Certainly have stumbled on a,nother detestable plant, the sa- 

 vin, in suspicious locahties, and fancied it looked much ashamed 

 of itself when detected. Before quitting the Palm-stove, which we 

 must with reluctance, we should remark the delicate green with 

 which the glass has been tinted at the suggestion of Mr. R. Hunt, 

 of the Geological Survey, in order to temper the too powerful 

 rays of the sun — a purpose which the experiment has successfully 

 answered. The sea-green hue is most visible outside towards 

 sunsetj or in winter when the sun is low. The last look here 

 shall be given to a subject unique in natural history, Mr. Smith's 

 own plant, which he has recorded in the Linnsean Transactions, 

 June 1839. Its nature will be indicated by translating the name 

 he gives it — Coelehogyne ilicifolia — as the holly -leaved bachelor- 

 female ; suggesting at the same time that it would have been bet- 

 ter if Latin and Greek had not been united in the first word. Mr. 

 tells us — 



' Shortly after their introduction the plants produced female 

 flowers ; but, although I have watched them carefully from year 

 to year, I have been unsuccessful in detecting anything like male 

 flowers or pollen-bearing organs ; and I should naturally have 

 passed them over as dioecious, and considered the three introdu- 

 ced individuals as females, had not my attention been particularly 

 directed to them in consequence of each of them producing fruit 

 and perfect seeds, from which I succeeded in raising young plants. 

 This, too, was not the result of one year, but of several successive 

 years' sowing. On considering the circumstances above noticed— 

 in particular the absence of male flowers of the plant itself or 

 of others related to it^ with the fact of the stigma remaining so 

 long unchanged, and not exhibiting the symptoms usually seen 

 in stigmas after having been acted upon by pollen — I can arrive 

 at no other conclusion than that it is not essential to the perfecting 

 its seeds : but if an external agent be necessary, and really act up- 

 on the stigma, I am unable to say what that agent is, or how it 

 acts.' 



The real wonder is, that in Australia, though not in Europe, 

 there are plants of the bachelor-temale which bear not inconspic- 

 uous male flowers, and that there is nothing at Kew likely to hy- 

 bridize the imported and native-born individuals. It seems a true 



2^ 



