368 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
Aquatic Vegetation. That splendid aquatic, 
called, in compliment to our Queen, 
Victoria Regia was discovered by Dr. Schom- 
burgh, on the 1st of January, 1837, on the river 
Berbice, in British Guiana. The flower is com- 
posed of many hundred petals passing in alternate 
tints from the purest white to rose and pink. 
When the flower-bud expands it is white, and 
pink toward the centre ; the pink tint gradually 
diffuses its glow over the entire disc, and on the 
following day, the whole is entirely suffused with 
that colour. 
The flower is fragrant ; the diameter of this 
goodly blossom is 15 inches, or 3 feet 9 inches in 
circumference. The leaf is orbiculate, or salver- 
shaped, with a broad rim of light green above, and 
a vivid crimson below. The leaf, in one instance, 
measured 6 feet 5 inches in diameter ; and its rim 
5 and-a-half inches in depth ; the ribs were in pro- 
minent relief, about an inch high, and radiated, as 
if from a common centre ; the stem of the flower 
near the calyx, which is reddish-brown, is an inch 
thick, and studded with sharp elastic prickles 
about three-fourths of an inch long. Air-cells 
abound in the veins, leaf, and flower-stalk, as well 
as in the petals adjoining the calyx : the seeds are 
imbedded in a spongy mass in a many-celled re- 
ceptacle.* 
But among all the phenomena of vegetation in 
aquatic abodes, none, perhaps, presents a more 
wonderful aspect than the 
Valisneria spiralis. This remarkable plant 
is dioecious, and is, so to speak, a divided being. 
The roots are distinct and independent ; and the 
plants are sometimes separated from each other at 
considerable distances. At a certain period of the 
year, the two separate classes of flowers, as by a 
signal mutually given, perfect their buds. 
In the one plant they part entirely from the 
stem, mount to the surface of the stream, and 
there suddenly expand ; they then float about, 
apparently at the caprice of the stream and seem- 
ingly without the control of design, like snow- 
flakes ; the other plant, however, whose flowers are 
supported on the summit of spiral stalks, coils, or 
winds up in corkscrew, these flower-buds from the 
bottom of the river, where they unfold in the air 
simultaneously with the other floating flower-cups. 
In process of time, its purpose being completed, 
the flower shuts, and by the contractile spiral fibre, 
is withdrawn to perfect its seeds in the watery 
medium. 
This curious and truly interesting plant, is found 
not only in the tanks of India, (and Dr. Schouw 
told me he discovered what he considered a dis- 
tinct species of Valisneria, in the fosse at Milan), 
but is an inhabitant of the Rhone, and other rivers 
that are subject to sudden changes of level, by an 
* This description of Victoria Regia , is of course made 
in reference to its native habitat. 
influx of the debacle or mountain-torrent, supplied 
by the melting of the glacier. 
The Valisneria spiralis is therefore enabled by 
this beneficent provision of spiral stems, to adjust 
its flower to variable surfaces. The design is truly 
wonderful ; but “ it is of a piece with the rest.” I 
have found that when the latter plant is isolated, 
it possesses the property of evolving infant plants 
which floated around their parent, as in the case of 
the Pontederia crassipes. — Economy of Vegetation. 
Vital Principle in Plants. What the “ vital 
principle ” is, or where it is to be found, I pretend 
not to know ; like its Almighty author, “No man 
hath seen it at any time,” yet it is the pundum 
saliens which throbs through the system of vege- 
tation, and the source and spring of all its 
functions and productions ; a dense and mysteri- 
ous veil, however, conceals it from the hiero- 
phant. The philosophy of man has never withdrawn 
this inscrutable Ens from the adytum where it 
remains enshrined. I am aware that an interdict 
like this, is not palatable in these days, when the 
wit of our philosophy soars so high above mystery, 
and would deny what it cannot solve. This, how- 
ever, is not the philosophy which I have been 
taught ; neither does it contain the elements of 
that of Bacon ; it will not do in this case, to cut the 
Gordian knot we cannot untie ; it makes the 
matter worse. It seems to my mind as demon- 
strable as any problem in Euclid, that the “ prin- 
ciple of life,” is one sui generis, superadded to 
organisation ; some there are who ascribe all the 
phenomena of life to mere organisation, or a pecu- 
liar arrangement of the ultimate atoms or mole- 
cules, as the French call them ; and some have 
ascribed an “ innate vitality ” to these atoms ; 
others may whistle to the tune of this dance of 
dust, and quadrille or waltz of molecules, but I must 
stand aloof from their eccentricities. 
To-day we see the plant a beautiful living thing, 
arrayed in a vesture of green, and blossoming in 
beauty, unfurling its ensigns to the sun, and all 
its functions moving in harmony, and obedient to 
the “ principle of life : ” to-morrow that plant has 
suffered an eclipse. There is now a sad reverse ; 
it is a leafless and a lifeless thing. Its flowers and 
foliage are scattered to the four winds of heaven ; 
its “silver cord is loosed” — the principle of life 
has fled, and the fountain of beauty is dried up. 
The most exquisitely finished and most delicate 
specimen of mechanism, with its varied wheels, 
pivots, and pinions, superadded to its spring and 
balance, still wants its compensation curb to regu- 
late its chronometry, and the artist’s hand must 
wind it up ; and can we doubt that the Master- 
key that wound up the machinery of vegetable 
creation hangs at the girdle of infinite intelli- 
gence ? 
The “ principle of life ” is neither heat nor elec- 
tricity, nor any other agent with which we are 
