CALENDAR FOR AUGUST. 
199 
some in its habit and in its ample foliage and singular large in- 
volucrated umbels of flowers ; but these last are wanting in colour 
to render the plant a very striking one. It is a native of Ja¬ 
maica, and seems to have been unnoticed by any one till my ex¬ 
cellent friend Dr. Macfacdyen transmitted dried specimens some 
years ago, and more recently (in 1843) our collector, Mr. Purdie, 
has sent both specimens and seeds to the Royal Gardens of Kew. 
The latter were reared, and produced fine flowering plants. It 
is a mountain plant, which Swartz gathered in the parish of St. 
James, and Mr. Purdie on the summit of the Dolphin, Hanover, 
where this noble species attains a height of twenty feet. It 
flowers in May, and succeeds best in a hot, moist, stove heat.— 
Bot. Mag. 4243. 
CALENDAR FOR AUGUST. 
The elm-trees in the neighbourhood of London are known to 
have been subject to be attacked by the grub of a small beetle 
(Scolytus Destructor) for a number of years, but it was not 
until from fifteen to twenty years ago that its ravages attracted 
much notice. About that period, or a little before, the damage 
inflicted on most of the old elms in St. James’s Park, Kensington 
Gardens, Camberwell Grove, Lincoln’s-inn Gardens, and, in fact, 
in every district where the trees were large, excited very consi¬ 
derable attention. It was then thought that only old trees in an 
incipient state of decay were attacked, but this is not the fact, 
as is evidenced by the numbers of trees from twenty to thirty 
years of age which have been destroyed within the last few years 
in the Regent’s Park and other places. The perfect insect, which 
is a small brown beetle, appears in June at the mouth of the 
round holes which it bores through the bark to liberate itself. 
In a short time the eggs are deposited beneath the bark by the 
beetle boring a passage two or three inches in length in the new 
bark, and then the eggs appear to be deposited at regular inter¬ 
vals on each side of the passage, in the tenderest parts of the 
new bark, and the insect dies apparently at the end where it en¬ 
tered, in which position they are generally found. How long 
the grub exists in this state is perhaps hardly correctly known, 
but as soon as hatched it commences its ravages by eating into 
the young bark away from the passage in which the eggs were 
