Morphological Notes. 
BY 
Sir W. T. THISELTON-DYER, K.C.M.G., C.I.E, F.R.S., 
Late Director , Royal Botanic Gardens , Kew. 
With Plates VIX -IX. 
XL Protective Adaptations, i. 
W E are all so much occupied with exploring and recording what seems 
to be new that most of us have little time, or perhaps patience, to 
take stock of the harvest of accurate and acute observation to be found in 
the writings of authors now almost fallen into oblivion, yet long ago recog- 
nized as classical. Such a book is the * Travels in the Interior of Southern 
Africa by William J. Burchell, published in two quarto volumes in 
1822-4. Yet the freshness of its outlook and the shrewd appreciation of 
ideas, which seem to us essentially modern, will amply repay its study. 
I am told that during the South African war copies were much in request 
amongst the Intelligence officers, and commanded a high price. Perhaps 
Professor Poulton, who has charge of Burchell’s entomological collections 
at Oxford and is the vindicator of his zoological work, might induce some 
enterprising publisher to issue a new edition under his editorship. 
Mesembryanthemum truncatum. 
The following passage (vol. i, * pp. 310-11) recalls the style and 
feeling of Darwin’s ‘ Naturalist’s Voyage’ : 
* On picking up from the stony ground, what was supposed a curiously 
shaped pebble, it proved to be a plant, and an additional new species t o the 
numerous tribe of Mesembryanthemum ; but in color and appearance bore 
the closest resemblance to the stones, between which it was growing. On 
the same ground was found a species of the Gryllus tribe amongst the 
stones, and so exactly like them in color and even in shape, that it could 
never have been discovered, had it not been observed just at a moment 
when in motion ; and as if more completely to elude notice, it seldom stirred, 
and even then, but slowly. The intention of Nature, in these instances, 
seems to have been the same as when she gave to the Chameleon the 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XX. No. LXXVIII. April, 1906.] 
