and variegated foliage, very catching to the eye, and unlike any of its
predecessors. The other, P. dumosum, is of similar habit, the foliage
being crested and fringed after the manner of some of our rare crested
ferns.--_The Gardeners' Chronicle_.

[Illustration: PANAX VICTORIAE.]

* * * * *




A NOTE ON SAP.

[Footnote: Read at an evening meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society,
London, April 4, 1883.]

By Professor ATTFIELD, F.R.S.


Beneath a white birch tree growing in my garden I noticed, yesterday
evening, a very wet place on the gravel path, the water of which was
obviously being fed by the cut extremity of a branch of the birch about
an inch in diameter and some ten feet from the ground. I afterward found
that exactly fifteen days ago circumstances rendered necessary the
removal of the portion of the branch which hung over the path, 4 or 5
feet being still left on the tree. The water or sap was dropping fast
from the branch, at the rate of sixteen large drops per minute, each
drop twice or thrice the size of a "minim," and neither catkins nor
leaves had yet expanded. I decided that some interest would attach to a