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The Museum Gazette 



over and over again, but in plants they usually leave their mark. 

 The parts which have been so affected either change colour or 

 become lifeless. 



No plant affords better opportunity for the study of the 

 changes just alluded to than does a shrub common in many 

 gardens, a Chinese species of bistort {Polygonum multiflomm). 

 The large, handsome leaves of this plant become brown at 

 their tips. Next a margin of brown or of purplish colour 

 surrounds the whole leaf and a very beautiful appearance 

 results. Soon, however, bars of brown are seen passing out- 

 wards from near the mid-rib and between the large veins- 

 These bars are always produced in the mid-distance, as far 

 from the mid-rib and the veins as is possible. By observing 

 their arrangement you may study the sap-supply of the leaf. 

 The leaf keeps green longest near to its sap-vessels, but finally 

 the whole of it is involved in death. 



The newspapers have been recording with surprise, and 

 some anxiety, the appearance of cases of leprosy in Switzer- 

 land. Why should this fell disease break out in these 

 beautiful districts, amongst people supposed to be cleanly and 

 well fed ? There need be no great wonderment. Leprosy has 

 never left the south of Europe, and there is always a sprinkling 

 of it near the shores of the Mediterranean. There is a leper 

 home at San Remo, and others in Spain. Be it observed that 

 it is now found in a Catholic Canton, where, no doubt, the fish 

 fasts are well observed, and that it does not spread as a con- 

 tagious disease would, there being still but very few cases. 



We give at pp. 259, 263, the names to the two anony- 

 mous portraits which appeared in our last issue, and also offer 

 in our present Frontispiece, and at p. 274, two more for 

 examination and diagnosis. 



