lamina or blade of the embryo leaf l, the two sides of which are folded together and which is bent downwards on its petiole. Behind is another stipular bud consisting of two stipules inclosing another inverted embryo leaf. Further dissection reveals other embryo leaves on a constantly diminishing scale of architecture, b, the linear mark on the shoot, or scar made by the stipular leaves, which are, in fact, only another variety of winter leaves. There are seven dots on the leaf-scar.

These shoots were collected in autumn. The Liriodendron tulipifera, which is a deciduous-leaved tree, has still attached to its apex one of its leaves, which is purposely left there, in order to give the reader a correct idea of its peculiar truncated form, and also a clear view of the embryo leaf b.

The lower and less developed herbaceous plants have also a winter's life and an appropriate shelter for that life, as well as the trees. The seeds of annuals and also the rhizomes, or underground stems of perennials, like the buds of trees, are only so many winter retreats into which the exhausted life of these plants retires for protection, repose, and recuperation during the winter months. "Seeds and resting-spores," says Henfrey, are organized in a manner especially adapted to preserve their latent vitality from injury by external influences. They can withstand great variations of heat or cold, especially in the absence of moisture. Most seeds will bear a temperature very far below the freezing-point if kept dry, and many will bear an exposure to 100° or 110° Fahr. in dry sand. Prolonged immersion in water at 120° kills most seeds unless the skin is very thick and they contain oil instead of starch in their endosperm."

The seeds of the Whitlow-grass (Draba verna), of the different species of chickweed (Cerastium and Stellaria), of the fumitory and corn-cockle, are sown early, and are, therefore, exposed to the excessive heats of summer as well as to the cold of winter, and yet they come up at their appointed season. So carefully has Nature prepared the seeds of these plants for the vicissitudes to which they are exposed! Draba verna, for example, is never scarce. This plant is quite common in Pennsylvania, as well as in England. There is no flower which has interested the writer more than this lowly annual. It is one of the least developed of all the Cruciferæ, whether we consider its leaves, whose vegetative power is so enfeebled that they do not form a sufficient amount of stem to separate them from each other, but remain in a stellate cluster on the ground; its tender capillary scape, or flower-stem, which only rises to a height of from one to three inches above the ground; the two or three small white flowers which that scape supports; or the brevity of its life,

for it comes up in March, and by the close of April has matured and scattered its seeds. Yet these minute seeds, with their microscopic rudiment of a plant, are mixed with the soil, from which they cannot be distinguished, and after lying exposed alike to the heat of summer and the cold of winter, germinate again at the appointed time on our rocks and old walls. In Pennsylvania, where the extremes of heat and cold are much more severe than in England, Draba verna grows profusely, and the writer has seen the gneiss rocks about Philadelphia positively overspread with whitened patches of this little plant, towards the close of the month of March.

But the greater portion of the herbaceous plants are perennials, whose leaves and flowers annually die down to their rhizome or underground stem, and, therefore, disappear like the annuals from the earth's surface in winter. But life remains in the rhizome, and the next year's growth is contained within the buds on the surface. The soil in this case shelters the buds. Hence, as soon as the frost is out of the ground, the plants which have been thus protected, issue forth from these subterranean buds, push up through the soil into the atmosphere, and again unfold their leaves and flowers on the same spot. Perennial plants, having the rhizome and bulb as a means of self-preservation, as might be naturally supposed, are not so prolific in seed as annuals.

The period of seed-rest or vegetable torpor may be prolonged for years, if there are not the conditions necessary for germination. For sixty years a bag of plants supplied the "Jardin des Plantes " annually with sensitive plants. Lindley mentions the germination of raspberry seeds, found in 1834, in an ancient barrow (tumulus), near Maiden Castle, along with coins of the emperor Hadrian. The seeds were found in a coffin thirty feet below the surface, and may have been from 1,600 to 1,700 years old.

It is thus that the germs of vegetable life are preserved. The Winter-life of Plants! It is one of slumber and inactivity, comparatively speaking, yet how deeply interesting its preservation. What, though the trees have on at present only their plain unattractive garb of winter leaves, yet their more ornamental summer-leaf dress has been carefully prepared for them, and now lies folded up in the bud,-the wardrobe of Nature! They will put it on uninjured at the appointed time! What matters it that the fierce north winds sweep the landscape of all its visible life and fertility, and extend still farther and farther the snowy territories of winter? The flowers are all safely sheltered in their winter home,

either in seeds or underground

beneath that snow covering,

buds, and they will come up again in their old haunts, delicate, beautiful, uninjured as ever! Who thus protects folded leaves and sleeping flowerets?

Even in winter, Nature with unwearied hand is ever preparing food for her plant-children, when they shall awaken from their slumbers. Frost and snow are of great service: the former breaks the hard masses, and renders the soil loose and porous; the latter spreads a warm covering over the landscape, thus protecting the numerous seeds of annuals and the underground stems of the perennials. Snow contains ammonia and other nutritive gases, and when it melts, the plants drink in its nourishing constituents. Thus when winter covers the earth with snow-storms, Nature is really benevolent, although apparently stern and unpitying.

EXPLANATION OF PLATE IX.

Fig. 1. One year's growth of beech-tree (Fagus sylvatica).

a. Annular or ring-like scars, left on the bark by the winter leaves or bud-scales.

s. Cicatrix, or leaf-scar, left on the bark by the summer leaves.

Fig. 2. Two shoots of the horse-chestnut tree (Esculus hippocastanum) placed together for comparison. The left-hand shoot is the growth of a single year, the right-hand shoot is the growth of ten years.

a. Scars left by winter leaves.

s. Scars left by summer leaves.

Fig. 3. A twig of the tulip-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera).

s. Cicatrix, or leaf-scar, left by the summer leaves.

b. Linear scar left by stipular leaves, a peculiar modification of the winter-leaf.

c. A closed stipular bud.

d. An open stipular bud, with the two stipules reflected downwards, to show

1. The lamina or blade of the embryo summer leaf inverted on its petiole, or its position whilst inclosed or packed away within the stipular leaves.

THE VINEGAR EEL

(Anguillula Aceti).

BY JABEZ HOGG, F.L.S., ETC.

AS

S much doubt seems to prevail concerning the development of the Anguillula, it appears to me a short history of these curious members of .the animal creation will not be out of place in the pages of this Journal.

It was at one time believed that vinegar eels were produced" in vinegar only (as stated in foot-note, at page 501, POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW, July), without the addition of any kind of vegetable matter;" but modern means of research have greatly contributed to our knowledge of these as well as many other minute creatures. The microscope, assisted by chemistry, has exploded the old idea and demonstrated to our senses that scarcely a liquid or a solid is free from the attacks of one or other of the many varieties of fungi, the sporules of which, ever floating about in the air, are everywhere present, and ready, in some marvellous way, to initiate the work of either reconstruction or destruction, as the case may be.

A vast number of these fungoid growths are developed in fluids during the various processes of fermentation; if, indeed, it may not be said of them, that they are the principal active agent in these apparently spontaneous reactions; all having a hidden period of incubation in these fluids, during which unseen stage they are causing the chemical changes in them, until finally a cryptogamic plant appears, multiplied a thousandfold, with each of its millions of sporules endowed with the original capacity of producing the same changes in the next fluid into which it may chance to enter.

We observe, also, another peculiarity in these low forms of vegetable life, the remarkable facility they possess of assuming other forms and characters, which would appear to depend upon the nature and constitution of the fluid, soil, and habitat in which they were found. This fact led me to the probable conclusion, in my late paper on the Truffle, when noticing the ciliated motion before Anguillulæ made their appearance in the sour mass. I am now anxious that it should be known, that, upon making further examinations, I have not been able to

verify the presence of cilia upon the ova; so that I believe the action observed must have been due to the presence of some other minute animal or vegetable life; as vibriones, &c.

If we now turn our attention particularly to the development of the Anguillulæ, we shall find they constitute a very widely distributed family, belonging to a still larger order of the animal creation, the Nematoidea, which abound almost everywhere. The whole genus were formerly classed with Infusoria, and arranged under variously distinctive names, mostly determined either by the substance or situation in which they were first discovered. The earliest contribution to the natural history of Anguillulæ appears in the writings of Turbervil Needham, under the heading of "Microscopical Observations on the Worms discovered in Smutty Corn," published in the year 1744, in a paper contributed to the Philosophical Transactions of the same period. He very correctly describes these worms, as he called them, and their economy, illustrating one memoir by tolerably correct figures. Yet, in a subsequent paper, he most unaccountably retracts everything he before had written respecting them, and declares "the white fibrous creatures in the interior of the corn to be true zoophytes."

Maurice Roffredi, in his memoir "Sur l'Origine des petits Vers ou Anguilles du Bled rachitiques," which appeared in vol. v. of the Journal de Physique, 1775, fully describes the Anguillulæ. He seems to have attentively observed their whole economy and many other peculiarities in the various stages of existence, although he fell into some errors with regard to their early development in the corn. He also was the first to communicate, or enoculated," as he terms it, the disease to rye and barley, by transferring young eels to both these grains, and in which they became as quickly developed as in wheat grains.

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F. Fontana also published some remarks on these minute creatures in 1776; but he fell into many errors concerning them first, he maintained that the infected grains in which the eels are found

Are extraneous tumours, or gall-nuts the mere produce of the worms; and, secondly, that the suspension of life, or muscular action, is neither a state of torpor nor suspension, but real death or extinction of life; and that they are brought to life again as often as they are moistened with

water.

But the clearest and most trustworthy account of the Anguillulæ appears in the Philosophical Transactions of 1822, by a Fellow of the Royal Society, Francis Bauer, in a memoir "On the Muscular Motion of the Vibrio Tritici ;" and the point which struck this observer most,-indeed first led him to study them,