to Europe. Last spring, Mr Colebrooke received a quantity of the ripe seeds from Dr Wallich, and presented a portion of them to Mr Lambert, who has been so fortunate as to raise a number of plants of this valuable vegetable. The seeds were sown in pots, and, by the aid of artificial heat, soon vegetated. The young seedlings were transplanted into separate pots filled with rich earth, and the pots were gradually changed as the plants increased in size. By this treatment, as might well be imagined, the young plants grew vigorously, and, at the end of autumn, the leaves were from fifteen inches to a foot in breadth, and the footstalks nine inches long, with half an inch of diameter. The plant, on examination, proved to be identical with my Rheum australe *, from Gosaingsthan in the Himalaya Alps. I find Dr Wallich calls it Rheum Emodi, a name which I should certainly have adopted, had I been aware of it before the publication of my work. The whole plant is thickly beset with numerous, small, bristle-shaped, cartilaginous points, which give it a rough feel. The leaves are of a dull green, and the footstalks are red and deeply furrowed. The native samples I have seen appear to be smaller in all their parts, and the leaves, although flowering specimens, frequently not more than three or four inches broad; the footstalks four inches long, and slender, and the flowering stem not above two feet high. It is curious to observe how well this description accords with what Sievers has given us. The Rheum australe appears to be peculiar to the great table lands of central Asia, between the latitudes of 31° and 40°, where it is found to flourish at an elevation of 11,000 feet above the level of the sea; and there is little doubt, therefore, of its proving perfectly hardy in our own country. Large quantities of the roots are annually collected for exportation in the Chinese provinces within the lofty range of the Himalaya. The best is that which comes by way of Russia, as greater care is taken in the selection; and on its arrival at Kiachta, within the Russian frontiers, the roots are all carefully examined, and the damaged pieces destroyed. This is the fine rhubarb of the shops, called improperly Turkey Rhubarb. We have yo * R. australe, foliis subrotundo-cordatis obtusis planis subtus margin scabris sinu baseos dilatatis, petiolis sulcatis teretiusculis cum ramis culisque-papilloso scabris, perianthii foliolis ovali-oblongis apice e -Don, Prod. Fl. Nepal, p. 75. regret the want of much interesting information respecting the mode of collecting and preparing the roots, and other details interesting in a commercial point of view. The unfortunate fate of Mr Moorcroft, whose zeal and multifarious knowledge well fitted him for a scientific traveller, has deprived us of much valuable information on this as well as on many other subjects. 2. On the Purple-coned Fir of Nepal. Mr Lambert has raised two plants of this interesting species from seeds received from Dr Wallich, along with those of the rhubarb plant above described. These are the first that have been -raised in Europe; for, although quantities of the seeds had been received from time to time, from the difficulty of transporting the seeds of coniferous trees, especially through the Tropics, all previous attempts to raise this valuable fir proved unsuccessful. This, which may be regarded as the silver-fir of Nepal, surpasses all others of the fir tribe in beauty. Its lofty and pyramidal form; its numerous long, erect, cylindrical, purple cones, studded with drops of pellucid resin; and its flat leaves, silvery underneath, and of a bright shining green above, which thickly adorn its ash-coloured branches, render it a truly picturesque object. The trunk is from 70 to 80 feet high, perfectly straight, covered with a smoothish grey bark, and having a circumference of 7 or 8 cubits. The wood is light, compact, and of a rose-colour, resembling in grain and colour the pencil cedar, Juniperus Bermudiana. Its cones afford by expression a purple dye. The resin, especially that of the seeds, is highly pungent to the taste; and its scent is very powerful, not inferior to that of the Deodara. The elevation at which it is found, namely, of from 8000 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, induces us to hope, that it will be found capable of enduring our severest winters. A magnificent plate of this species, accompanied by a complete description, will be found in the second volume of Mr Lambert's monograph of the genus, under the name of Pinus spectabilis. 3. On the Mustard Tree. Captains Irby and Mangles, in their interesting Travels *, * Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and Asia Minor, during the years 1817 and 1818, by the Honourable Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles, Commanders in the Royal Navy.-Printed for private distribution, London, 1823. . 1 vol. 8vo. make mention of a tree observed by them in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, which they were led, from certain circumstances, 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 a 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 inte、、、 rested 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 Palestina," 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 character, "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 plant 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 tea chests, 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 differed 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 Scitamineæ, 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 1827, JANUARY-MARCH 1827. X |
