make mention of a tree observed by them in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, which they were led, from certain cir cumstances, to suppose might be identical with the mustard plant of the Sacred Scriptures. As the passage is instructive, and the work itself in but few hands, I shall here, for the sake of illustration, insert the whole of it. They remark, (Letter v. p. 354, 355.) on leaving the shores of the Dead Sea, "We now entered into a very prettily wooded country, with high rushes* and marshes; leaving these, the variety of bushes and wild plants became very great; some of the latter were rare, and of remarkable appearance." And, again, "There was one curious tree, which we observed in great plenty, and which bore a fruit in bunches resembling, in appearance, the currant, with the colour of the plum. It has a pleasant, though strong aromatic taste, exactly resembling mustard; and, if taken in any quantity, produces à similar irritability in the nose and eyes, to that which is caused by taking mustard. The leaves of this tree have the same pungent flavour as the fruit, though not so strong. We think it probable that this is the tree our Saviour alluded to in the parable of the mustard seed, and not the mustard plant which we have in the north; for, although in our journey from Byson to Adjeloun, mentioned in the Jerusalem Letter, we met with the mustard plant † growing wild, as high as our horses' heads, still, being an annual, it did not deserve the appellation of a tree; whereas the other is really such, and birds might easily, and actually do, take shelter under its shadow.” On reading this passage, both Mr Lambert and myself felt interested in ascertaining what the tree might be, and, at first, we were inclined to suppose it was a species of Phytolacca; with which genus the habit of the plant, as far as could be learnt from the above description, pretty well accords; but the examination of an authentic sample, in the possession of Mr Bankes, has proved the supposition was unfounded, and that the tree is the Salvadora persica of Linnæus, the Embelia Grossularia of Retzius, and the Cissus arborea of Forskahl.

Scirpus lacustris L. which is abundant in the marshes on the shores of the Dead Sea

+ Probably Sinapis nigra, which in Spain grows to the height of from ten to fifteen feet, as I am informed by my learned friend Don Mariano Lagasca.

It is figured and described by the late Dr Roxburgh in his splendid work on the plants of the coast of Coromandel -a work which we regret to see discontinued by the Court of Directors. In that work the following interesting remarks on the Salvadora persica are given, which will be found to coincide entirely with what Captains Irby and Mangles have observed. "This is a middle sized tree, a native of most parts of the Circars, though by no means common; it seems to grow equally well in every soil: flowers, and bears ripe fruit all the year round. The berries have a strong aromatic smell, and taste much like garden-cresses. The bark of the root is remarkably acrid; bruised and applied to the skin it soon raises blisters, for which purpose the natives often use it; as a stimulant it promises to be a medicine possessed of very considerable powers." The Salvadora persica has an extensive geographical range, being found in Arabia, Syria, Persia, and India, between the parallels of 18° and 31° north latitude. The parallel of 31° appears to be its ultimate limit towards the north. I am far from assuming this tree to be identical with the apocryphal mustard plant of the Sacred Scriptures: indeed, the whole passage in the Gospel by St Matthew* appears to militate against such an opinion, and it would seem that some common agricultural herb, of large growth, had been intended by our Saviour in the parable; but whether the plant belongs to the same family with Sinapis of Linnæus, and for what purposes it was cultivated, are questions rendered quite problematical at this distant date. We are pretty certain, however, that it cannot be a Phytolacca; for it does not appear that any real species of that genus has been observed in Palestine. It is true, that, in an academical dissertation of Linnæus, entitled, "Flora Palæstina," published in the year 1756, and professing to embrace all the plants observed by Hasselquist, we find the name of Phytolacca asiatica, by which is probably intended the Salvadora persica, a plant with which Linnæus does not appear to have ever been well acquainted, and of which he probably derived all his knowledge from Garcin's description, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of

"A mustard-seed.... which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree; so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

London for 1749; for, in the first edition of the Species Plantarum, published at Stockholm in 1753, we find Phytolacca asiatica for the first time noticed, with the following specific charac ter, "Phytolacca foliis serratis ;" and a reference made to the Kalagu of Rheede, (Hort. Malab. ii. t. 26.), which has a pinnate leaf, and is evidently nothing else than Leea sambucina, Linnæus appears to have been soon aware of his error, as in the subsequent editions of the Species Plantarum, the name is dis continued. My only object in this communication was to point out precisely the piant noticed by Captains Irby and Mangles, This object, I trust, I have satisfactorily fulfilled; but, as to attempting to ascertain the precise plant mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, the difficulties that present themselves appear to me not to be lessened,

Addition to the Botanical Notices, published in No. XXVI, of the Philosophical Journal, October 1825,

IN

In my article on the leaves used by the Chinese in lining teachests, there is some obscurity in the description of the nerves, which I think it necessary to remove. It seems as if I denied the existence of a midrib, but this I did not intend; for I meant to say, that the leaves agreed with the genus Pharus, and dif, fered from most other Graminea, in the presence of a midrib, and that their straight parallel nerves, running longitudinally from the base to the apex of the leaf, distinguished them essentially from those of Scitaminea, wherein the nerves arise laterally from the midrib, traversing the leaf in an obliquely transverse direction from the centre to the margin.

On the Structure and Characters of the Octopus ventricosus, Gr. (Sepia octopodia, Pent.), a rare species of Octopus from the Firth of Forth. By R. E. GRANT, M, D., F. R. S. E., F. L. S., M. W. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physi cians of Edinburgh, Honorary Member of the Northern Institution, &c, Communicated by the Author*,

THE species of Octopus, of which I now present two speci

mens from the Firth of Forth, is of rare occurrence on our coasts,

*Read before the Wernerian Natural History Society 13th January 1897, JANUARY-MARCH 1827,

X

and is not to be found among the species of that animal described by Lamarck, nor among those described by Carus, as occurring in the Mediterranean. It possesses the characters of the genus Octopus of Lamarck, but differs from his O. vulgaris and O. granulatus, in having only a single in place of a double row of suckers on each arm. It differs from his O. cirrhosus, in having the upper margin of the mantle fixed behind, and continuous with the back of the head, in place, of being free and detached all round. And it differs from his only other species, the O. moschatus, in being entirely free from that remarkable musky odour ascribed to that species by every author, and from which it has received its specific name. Pennant has pretty ac curately represented our present species under the Linnæan name of Sepia octopodia, (Br. Zool. iv. pl. 28). But, from the description he has given, and from the name he has applied to it, it is obvious, that he was unaware of the existence of any other species of octopus, and mistook this for the O. vulgaris, which has a double range of suckers, and is much more common. The figure given by Carus of the O. moschites (Nova Acta Acad. Cæs. vol. xii. tab. 32.) agrees with Pennant's species in its external characters, excepting that the body of the moschites is a little more lengthened and cylindrical, the base more tapered, the eyes larger, and the arms more slender. But Carus mentions, that his species smells so strongly of musk as to fill quickly a whole apartment, whether the animal be dead or alive; and the same remarkable property is ascribed to it by Cuvier, Lamarck, and other writers. Aristotle, Aldrovandus, and some later authors, have divided the Octopoda into two genera, applying the term Eledona (Eλsdam Arist.) to those species, which, like the present, have only a single row of suckers on each arm; but this unnecessary subdivision of the well marked genus Octopus is probably not justified by the importance of the character proposed, and the most distinguished naturalists, as Cuvier, Lamarck, Blainville, and Carus, have not adopted it. As Pennant's species has neither the white skin, the smooth surface, the lengthened body, nor the musky odour of the O. moschatus, and differs, in more obvious characters, from the other species, we are compelled either to retain its specific name octopodia given by Pennant, or to devise a new epithet more con

sistent with our present knowledge of these animals. It must be obvious, that the term octopodia, though very appropriate for one of the sepia of Linnæus and Pennant, cannot be applied to a species of Octopus without a plain tautology, and because the specific name, being then synonymous with the generic," would be equally applicable to all the species. Until a more determinate character, founded on structure, be discovered by a careful dissection of the other species, I have called the present species O. ventricosus, from the rounded appearance of the body in both the specimens I have seen, and in the figure of it represented by Pennant.

Many excellent details of the structure and habits of the Sepia, the Loligo, and the Octopus vulgaris have been given by Aristotle, Swammerdam, Monro secundus, Scarpa, Tilesius, and Cuvier; but, so far as I know, none of the species of octopus, with a single row of suckers, have yet been opened by anatomists. The O. ventricosus is the fifth species of cephalopodous animals I have already procured from the Firth of Forth, the other species being the Octopus vulgaris, Loligo sagittata, Loligo vulgaris, and Loligo sepiola; and it is interesting to observe, that these species are nearly all the same as those met with by Carus in the Mediterranean. That naturalist observed in the Gulf of Genoa, specimens of the Oct. vulgaris, Oct. moschatus, Loligo sagittata, L. sepiola, L. vulgaris, and Sepia officinalis.

The following observations are chiefly taken from a recent adult female specimen of the O. ventricosus, lately presented to me by my friend Mr Coldstream, and to abridge the anatomical details, I have compared its organs with those of the O. vulgaris, already fully described by Cuvier in his elaborate memoir on that animal, (Mem. sur les Moll. p. 1.)

The body of the ventricosus is short, broad, slightly depressed, rounded, and a little dilated posteriorly, granulated and deeply coloured with small reddish brown spots on the back, smooth and light coloured on the fore-part. The upper margin of the mantle is connected behind, across the whole breadth of the head, and has no lateral expansions to assist in swimming. In the other genera Loligo and Sepia, the mantle is free behind, and in these as well as in the Loligopsis, it is armed with lateral expansions to assist in swimming. These expansions are supplied in the O. ventricosus by the muscular web connecting the base of the arms. The funnel is long, narrow,