ON TIIE NATURE OF ENTOZOOID ORGANISMS. 
523 
Mr. Spencer further supported his views by drawings and descriptions of certain organs 
which terminate the vascular system in many leaves—organs specially adapted by their 
structures and positions for absorbing the elaborated sap that has to be drawn back from 
the leaves for the nutrition of the supporting parts. These structures, to which, as it 
appears, no one has previously called attention, consist of masses of irregular and im¬ 
perfectly-formed fibrous cells. Mr. Spencer also showed specimens of some very singular 
and beautiful structures of a similar nature in the common turnip, which have been 
equally overlooked by microscopists, although they may even be seen by the naked eye. 
Great credit is due to Mr. Spencer for his ability and his powers of observation, and it is 
earnestly to be hoped that he will pursue his investigations in this very important sub¬ 
ject. We propose, on some other occasion, to recur to a matter so interesting to all 
scientific horticulturists; till then we defer further comment on Mr. Spencer’s views.—- 
The Gardeners’ Ch ronicle and Agricultural Gazette. 
KEW GARDENS. 
The number of visitors to the Royal Gardens at Kew in 1865 was 529,241, a larger 
number by 55,934 than in 1864. The number who came on Sundays was very nearly 
equal to the numbers who came on all the week days added together. The greatest 
Sunday attendance was 16,842 ; the greatest week-day attendance 19,849. Dr. Hooker, 
who has succeeded his distinguished father as director, has to record the acquisition in 
the herbarium department of two of the most important private collections that existed 
in Europe,—Dr. Lindley’s collection of orchids by purchase, and by gift the herbarium 
collected in South Africa and South America by the late Dr. Burchell, whose Brazilian 
collection alone comprises above 50,000 specimens. Dr. Hooker has also to report that the 
cinchona plantations in India are being immensely extended. An infusion of the leaves 
is found an excellent febrifuge, and it is therefore desirable that it should be cultivated 
wherever its foliage is produced in tolerable abundance. From Ceylon ripe seeds of 
Cinchona officinalis have been received at Kew, and transmitted to Jamaica and Tri¬ 
nidad. Mr. Hills, director of the Botanic Gardens at Brisbane, who went there from 
Kew, reports the complete success of the Cinchona Calisaya sent from Kew. From the 
Cape of Good Hope most valuable reports have been received from Dr. Brown, colonial 
botanist, treating of the conservation of the forests of that colony, the destruction of 
which by fire has led to the sterility of large tracts of once well-watered land. The 
cultivation of the Olive seems to promise to become of great importance there, and some 
of the best kinds will be procured and transmitted thither. Of once sterile Ascension 
Island, which we continue to supply with plants, Captain Barnard reports that it now 
possesses thickets of upwards of forty kinds of trees, besides numerous shrubs and fruit- 
trees, of which, however, only the Guava ripens. These already afford timber for 
fencing cattle-yards. When Dr. Hooker visited the island in 1843, owing to want of 
water, but one tree existed on it, and there were not enough vegetables produced to 
supply the commandant’s table; whereas now, through the introduction of vegetation, 
the water supply is excellent, and the garrison and ships visiting the island are sup¬ 
plied with abundance of vegetables of various kinds. Dr. Hooker states that it is pro¬ 
posed to cultivate in Ceylon and the West Indies the Calumba Root, introduced from the 
Mauritius, some eminent druggists having reported that the supply from East Africa is 
both scanty and bad, and that, owing to the condition of labour, etc. on the African 
coast, there is no prospect of an improvement. 
ON THE NATURE OF THE ENTOZOOID ORGANISMS WHICH OCCUR IN 
ANIMALS AFFECTED WITH THE RINDERPEST. 
A paper was published by Dr. Lionel S. Beale in the ‘Medical Times and Gazette’ 
for January 20, 1866, on certain Entozooid Organisms which occur very constantly in 
the voluntary muscular tissue of beasts affected with the rinderpest, and in that of the 
heart. Dr. Beale does not assert that these bodies are really animals, but contents him¬ 
self with giving their history—for they have been observed for some years in various 
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