The Romance of Plant Life. Elliot George Francis Scott

3

The ascent is assisted by the osmotic absorption of water at the root and by evaporation at the leaves.

4

This is still the custom in the huts of the wizard or medicine-man in West Africa, where one finds small cushions stuck over with all sorts of poisonous plants, bits of human bones, and other loathsome accessories.

5

Cooke, British Fungi.

6

The same "woad" which was used by the Britons to paint themselves with.

7

Lascelles, Pharm. Journ., 23 May, 1903.

8

Bonnier, Cours de Botanique.

10

"Guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino

Giunto all' umor che dalla vite cola."

He is speaking of wine – that "lovable blood," as he describes it.

11

Hartig finds the specific gravity of the wood in a tree is increased from 0-60 to 0.74 when the surrounding wood has been cut down. —Bot. Central, vol. xxx, p. 220.

12

Bonnier, Cours de Botanique.

13

Bonnier, l. c.

14

Dunlop House, Kilmarnock.

15

It will be remembered that they were obliged to keep the sacred fire always burning, and were put to death if they misbehaved. The fire was never allowed to go out during the whole of Roman history, and the custom has been even preserved in some Roman Catholic convents and chapels.

16

Seven Seas.

17

Munro, Lake Dwellings.

18

Royal Dublin Society, vol. i. part v. No. 11.

19

Niven, Bot. Section British Association, 1901.

20

Boyd Watt, Cairngorm Club Journal, vol. iv. No. 20, January, 1903; Smith, Lewis, Roy. Geog. Soc. Journal.

21

The Romans used it for ships' masts and spars.

22

Most of these interesting details are found in Boulger's valuable treatise on "Wood."

23

Compare the report by the Society of Arts.

24

The Toll of the Bush.

25

The historical account by Bonnier, Cours de Botanique, is very interesting and complete.

26

The pollen from the great pine forests of the Italian Alps blown up to the snow becomes used in nourishing the Pink or Red Snow Algæ, which colours it a delicate rose-pink. In lower grounds all such pollen becomes, like leaf-mould, a manure for other plants. There is no waste, strictly speaking.

27

Pharmaceutical Journal, May 20th, 1899.

28

Buscalioni e Traverso, Atti del Ist. Bot. di Pavia, vol. 10, 1904.

29

Von Buttel, Respen.

30

Linnæus and many others have made Floral Clocks. Kerner, Natural History of Plants, describes the opening and closing of flowers very fully.

31

Huck, Unsere Honig u. Bienenpflanzen. These are drawn up for Germany, and cannot be warranted for this country.

32

Memories of the Months.

33

Compare Shelley, who watched all day "the yellow bees in the ivy bloom," but he "did not heed what things they be." Moreover, though he appreciated the general spirit of the bee, it is very unlikely that he saw any of them on the Ivy!

34

Kerner and Oliver, l. c., vol. 1, p. 88.

35

Annals of Botany, 1904.

36

Lilienfeld, Beihefte z. Botan. Centralblatt, Band XIV., abth 1, pp. 131-212. The facts were denied by Newcombe and Rhodes, Bot. Gazette, 36, 1904.

37

If the growing part itself touches a stone it curves round the stone, not away from it – the reverse of the reaction at the tip!

38

Pfeffer, l. c., p. 139.

39

This weed is a cure for gout, and seems to have been called Bishopsweed because it was supposed that gout was a common ailment of bishops!

40

By the classical researches of Rimbach.

41

Scott Elliot and Fingland, Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, vol. 5, New Series, part ii., 1897-8.

42

See Rimbach's researches.

43

Schimper, Pflanzengeographie. The account is based on the works of Pynaert, Sachs, Askenasy, etc.