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Scientific Intelligence. — Botany. 
this gum into ornaments, shaped like a club or a spindle, which 
they wear in holes, bored in the nose and underlip. Of the 
thick bark of the tree they make small canoes, which, on account 
of their lightness, are peculiarly adapted for land carriage from 
one river to another. Many lofty crotons also grow on the 
banks of the Sapucahy. A red resinous matter is obtained 
from them, which the inhabitants call dragon’s-blood, and use 
for dying.” — Spix and Martins’s Travels. 
14. Sterility of Hybrid Plants. — The phenomenon of hybri- 
dism is perhaps of more frequent occurrence than is imagined in 
common plants, or in such as belong to genera numerous in 
species. It has only, however, been confirmed in a satisfactory 
manner by a small number of observations. That which forms 
the subject of the present note, is confirmative of another nearly 
similar one, made by MM. Guillemin and Dumas upon the 
Gentians, and which they have inserted in the first part of the 
“ Memoires de la Societe d’Histoire Naturelle.” MM. Aug. de 
St Hilaire, and De Salvert, while herbarizing in the Lower 
Auvergne, made the discovery of a Digitalis, which they took 
at first for the Digitalis fuscata of Persoon. Paying afterwards 
more attention to the circumstances in which it was found, they 
concluded that it was a hybrid of Digitalis purpurea and D. 
lutea. In consequence, M. de Salvert published its description 
in the Journal de Botanique, and named it D. hybrida. M. de 
St Hilaire adds here, that, during six years, the same plant has 
been found in the same valley, and in the midst of the two pa- 
rent species ; that its capsules were constantly shrivelled, and 
did not contain any seeds capable of germination ; lastly, that the 
ovaries resembled a fine and light powder. This fact must be 
added to those which have already been recorded, as in favour 
of the sterility of hybrids. M. de St Hilaire, as well as MM. de 
Candolle, Guillemin, and Dumas, do not pretend to assert, that 
this incapability of generation is common to all the individuals 
originating in this way. — Bidletin Universel. 
15. Disengagement of Ammoniacal Gas during the Vegeta- 
tion qf the Chenopodium vulvaria. — There is not a more singular 
phenomenon in vegetable physiology, than the well known fact 
of the continual motions of certain aeriform fluids in the interior 
