naturalist’s calendar. 
535 
A triplex portulacoides, or Shrubby Sea Purslane (3). The whole 
plant wears a bluish green aspect. In waste grounds, and by road¬ 
sides, grows the Cynoglossum officinale, or Common Hounds-Tongue. 
(4) It grows about two feet high, and bears red flowers; it has a 
smell like mice, and is disliked by cattle. 
Vegetable Peculiarities. —In the temperate zone, those trees 
which change their foliage with the seasons, shedding their leaves as 
the winter comes on, and standing with bare branches through a 
succession of weeks, if hard and solid timber trees, are notoriously 
of slow growth, and require years, in some cases ages, to mature the 
texture of their fibres. This is the case with oaks and elms. Where, 
however, vegetation is never checked by hybernation, as in most 
trees of the tropics, and in the evergreens of temperate climates, woods 
may be of quick growth, and have all the characters of durability, 
weight, and compactness. The Acacia batriahonda , which yields 
a more solid and durable timber than any European tree, arrives at 
maturity in fifteen or twenty years, and is never leafless, whilst the 
Ceiba, or silk-cotton tree (Bombax pentandra,) a very giant of the 
forest, and the gomier (Busera gummifera) a tree of good size and 
bulk, showing their golden foliage every year, are the softest, of all 
tropical woods used for domestic or constructive purposes. The one 
is scooped into canoes, for which its large growth and light texture 
admirably adapt it; the other is formed into bowls and small gamel- 
les, for which its facility of being worked, and its clean whiteness 
render it highly suitable. The dye woods, which are all woods of 
hard flinty growth, suffering no hybernation, are of rapid growth. 
Such are the logwood, (Hematoxylum Campechianum,) the fustic 
(Morns tinctoria) and the brazilletto (Csesalpinia vesicaria,) &c. but 
the balsamiferous, or resinous trees, though they do not cast their 
leaves, are comparatively slow growers.— F.N. Magazine. 
Chara Vulgaris. —The best way to obtain a view of the circu¬ 
lation of the sap, is to rub a piece of the plant gently with a wet bit 
of leather, and this will take off some of the incrustations of dirt and 
lime with which this plant is usually invested, and which renders it 
opaque, and injures it very much as a microscopic object; the rub¬ 
bing will render it sufficiently transparent. A piece of the plant, 
about half or three quarters of an inch long, should then be put be¬ 
tween two pieces of glass, with a little water, but without being 
pressed so as to bruise the plant. It is then fixed before a candle 
so as no light can lie seen but what comes through the stem of the 
plant. If the plant be pretty free from dirt, the sap will be seen 
ascending along the middle of the stem, and descending at the side. 
