92 
naturalists’ calendar. 
bears a little blue flower. Many mosses are now in their fullest verdure, appear 
ing destined to keep up the green tints of nature, when all other vegetation is 
dead and slumbering, and to protect the roots of larger plants from vicissitudes 
of cold, as well as of heat, and from too much moisture, as well as too great drv- 
ness. Marsh and water-mosses have a tendency to produce soil, and to conveit 
morasses into solid land; while they efleet the purification of water, in which 
they grow, by absorbing the putrescent substances with which it may be corrupt¬ 
ed, and by exhaling oxygen in exchange.* Amongst lichens may be found on 
banks the Cenomyce pyxidata; (3) it grows in tufts about three quarters of an 
inch high, and may be easily known by its curious cups, and light blue colour. 
On the tops of high hills, grows the C. bellidiflora, (4) it is ( f a pale green co¬ 
lour, and grows in patches disposed in stiff scales: also in woods may be col¬ 
lected at all seasons the C. baccillaris, (5) it grows about two inches high, in 
branch-like rods of a whitish colour. To this genus belongs the lichen that feeds 
the vast herds of rein-deer, in Lapland, growing in amazing abundance, and co¬ 
vering the ground for vast tracts, like a sheet of snow ; the C. pyxidata has been 
sometimes used as a cure for the hooping cough. 
Essential Characters of the Roots and Stems of Plants. —In what¬ 
ever medium they are developed, roots are always deprived of vital knots, sym¬ 
metrically disposed at the surface, and consequently of foliaceous appendages. 
The multiplication of the branches is purely accidental. Stems on the contrary 
are always provided with vital knots, ou the surface, symmetrically arranged, 
or accompanied by a foliaceous appendage : an organ sometimes reduced to a 
rudimentary state, or altogether wanting. Potatoes are not roots, but stems ex¬ 
panded at their extremities, and with the interior converted into feculent cells, 
mixed with fibres. And the same phenomena is observed in the bulbs of the 
Jerusalem Artichoke, but the Batatas or sweet potatoe is a true tuberculous root. 
— Mein, du inns, d? Nat. His. 
Birds. —At first sight, it might be supposed, that in the tympanum of birds, 
there is only one orifice leading into the labyrinth; but it is not so; for this 
single opening is merely the entrance into a short canal, at the bottom of which 
are two holes, separated by a spiculum of bone, and corresponding to the fenes¬ 
tra ovalis, and fenestra rotunda in the mammalia. These in the dry bone, both 
open into the vestibule, in consequence of the rudimentary state of the cochlea ; 
but, in the recent ear of the bird, in which some of the deficiency of the osseous 
part of the cochlea is supplied by the structure of the soft parts, there are, con¬ 
trary to what is stated by M. de Blainville, the same relations between the coch¬ 
lea, vestibule, and tympanum, as in the mammalia; one rudimentary scala of the 
cochlea communicating with the vestibule, and the other with the tympanum, 
by means of the fenestra rotunda, which is closed by a membrane.— Edinb. Jour. 
Since our last calendar, we have not observed a single specimen of the siskin, 
(Carduelis spinus) although throughout the months of November and December, 
we had large flocks of them. The fieldfares and redwings also appear to have 
nearly taken their leave of us, in the High Peak of Derbyshire. 
Molluscous Animals.— Under stones, and amongst moss and grass, may be 
found Bulimus lubricus; (6) the shell is hardly a quarter of an inch long, and 
one-third of its length broad, of a glossy brown or horn colour, with often a red¬ 
dish tinge, quite smooth and polished. On sandy pastures near the sea shore, 
* Rennie. 
