424 
POPULAK SCIENCE KEVIEW. 
plant are most valuable in cookery. Tkey give a flavour and perfume iden- 
tical witk tke best truffles of Perigord. Hence be names tbe Lotus, Lotus 
trvffiei'. 
The Anther ozoids of Mosses. — M. E, Eoze, in a note addressed to the Academy, 
gives the results of his later observations on these structures. The results 
of his first researches led him to conclude that the fecundating organs were 
constituted by a single biciliated filament with two spiral turns, to which 
were attached, but only during the motility of the filament, a mass of 
starchy gi’anules. He has this Spring, with the assistance of Hartnack’s 
immersion objective No. 15, been able to demonstrate that these granules, 
instead of being fixed upon the ciliated spire, are enclosed in a plasmic 
hyaline vesicle, which is attached to the special filament by a sort of tan- ^ 
gential adhesion. Lmder a power of 1,500 diameters the vesicle shows itself r 
very distinct by its spheroidal outline and by the very active molecular move- 
ment of the granules. Like the plasmic vesicle of the antherozoids of other 
classes of Ciy^togamia, the vesicle is inflated with water soon after the fila- I 
ment ceases to move ; then it bursts and sets free the starchy granules to J 
continue their rapid molecular movements, which seem invariably to coincide f 
with the cessation of movement of the spiral filament. M. Eoze states that 
the new lens has only confirmed the conclusions he has already published on 
this subject. Tide Comptes Rendus, June 15. 
Specific Identity of the Almond and Peach. — A paper on this subject was 
read before the British Association at the Norwich meeting by l)r. Karl ^ 
Koch. - The author said it had long been a debated question as to whether | 
the peach tree was descended from the almond j but a careful examination ^ 
of the subject had convinced him that the almond was the original stem f 
from which the peach was derived. He referred to the cultivated plum | 
trees, and said that in his opinion the gveengage was descended from a ^ 
different stem to that from which the ordinary plum and damson were 
derived. All cultivated cherry trees were, he thought, desceiided from one 
parent stem. Hr. Koch also suggested in another paper the advisability of « 
photographing plants for the purposes of identification. 
Rate of Growth of Wellinytonia. — At the same meeting Mr. John Hogg, 
F.K.S., read a paper on the Wellingtonia Gigantea, with remarks on its 
form and rate of gro^vth as compared with the Cedrus Libani. The author 
alluded to some of the peculiarities of this remarkable tree, a magnificent 
specimen of the bark of which was exhibited in the tropical department of ! 
the Crystal Palace, now unfortunately destroyed. Several groves of these j 
monarchs of the forest were described, containing in all about 1,250 trees. 
The author did not agvee in the estimate of the age of one of these mammoth 
trees, which had been said to be 3,000 years old ; believing its real age to be 
about 1,300 years. The value of the timber of a single tree, at a halfpenny 
per foot, was stated to be 6,250/. The author had one of these trees (eight 
years old, and 7 feet 6 inches high) in his own possession. It bore two 
cones and one male flower at the age of six years j the cedar of Lebanon not 
bearing cones till after the age of twenty years. 
