464 
BOTANICAL NOTES. 
I just reached the room in time to meet the Polecat coming out at the door with 
the Rat quite dead in his mouth; this time my friend had made sure work of it, 
and I left him with his prey. I have now only to describe the end of my 
favourite Black Rat. 
Feeling quite unable to part thus suddenly with this interesting creature, I 
placed his cage upon the leads which were within reach of my window. (The 
Edinburgh houses are built differently from those in Dublin.) In this he passed 
the day, and at night my bed was still, though of course “ sub rosa” his place of 
repose—and he came to know the hour when I would bring him in so well, that 
if I suffered it to pass by without doing so, he would, in the course of an hour, 
commence gnawing the wood of his cage, as if endeavouring to obtain his liberty 
and seek his forgetful master. 
One night, having been out late at a scientific meeting, I went hastily to bed 
on my return without thinking of my poor Rat. In the morning I found a hole 
gnawed through the box, and himself away—I searched every place for him, for 
I knew he would not have willingly deserted me, and I at length found him on 
the ground beneath, stiff and dead. He had fallen from the leads on getting out 
of his cage. 
BOTANICAL NOTES. 
Principally from the Herbarium of the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. 
By T. B. Hall. 
Bryophyllum calycinum. —There is a leaf of this plant in the Herbarium 
at the Liverpool Botanic Garden, with the following note by the late Mr. J. 
Shepherd : — “ I laid down the large leaf of this curious plant on the 18th of April, 
1814; I first observed it to begin to produce the young plants round the edge on 
the 23rd of May; and although in the press amongst other specimens, yet they 
continued to grow until the 20th of July; out of the 20 dents, it produced IT 
plants.” This curious plant is a native of the East-Indies, and belongs to the 
natural order Sempervivece* 
Pimpinella dioica .—This rare plant is a native of the rocks at the Hotwells 
(Bristol), where it grows but sparingly. In a botanical excursion with Sir T. 
Cullum and Sir W. Watson, A.D. 1789,1 found one specimen, and in a subse- 
* The derivation of the generic name— bryo , to grow, and phyllon , a leaf—is very appropriate, 
on account of the tendency which the leaves have to produce young plants. 
