into leavee.[1] Had Baillon read the passage in Richard, to which he refers, he would have seen that Richard correctly regarded the gall as a leafy branch, changed by the attacks of some insect into a false cone. Degeer[2] describes the insect by which these galls are made, (Chermes abietis, linn.), and figures it and its gall.[3] He says, "those who have no accurate botanical knowledge, may readily mistake the galls for fir-cones and fruit." Kaltenbach[4] says, in like manner, "that these galls closely resemble fir-cones, and may readily be confounded with them by ignorant people."[5]
From the observations given above, it is certain that the flowers of Abietineæ, consist of naked ovules rising from a carpel, and not of pistils springing from an axis. It has been almost universally acknowledged by authors, from the time of Richard down to that of Baillon,[6] that the flowers of Conifers and Cycads, are almost uniform in structure, following the same laws, with very trifling differences. It appears, therefore, probable that the ovules of all Conifers, Taxus included, are borne on carpels and not on the axis, though at first sight this appears incredible. I shall return to this subject elsewhere.
V.—On the Ancient Lake Habitation's of Switzerland.
By John Lubbock, Esq., F.R.S.
Archæology forms the link between Geology and History—the past and the present. If in its more recent portions it is scarcely distinguishable from History, yet when we pass back to its commencement, we find ourselves to have imperceptibly glided into the domain of Geology, without noticing any boundary to separate the one from the other. The beginning of Archæology being, in fact, but the end of Geology, it is not surprising that they should, in the course of their development, have presented some remarkable analogies. M. Morlot has well pointed these out in his "Leçon d'ouverture d'un cours sur la haute antiquité, fait a l'Academie de Lausanne."
Even, indeed, as the remains of extinct animals were at first supposed to be few and far between, whereas, in fact, the surface of the earth is made up of the dust and skeletons of our predecessors, so the relics of man, long looked upon as rare and exertional in their occurrence, are gradually presenting themselves in unexpected profusion. Loth, however, to distrust the existing chronology, our antiquaries long referred all the most beautiful and well-made weapons to the Romans, just as all fossils were attributed to the action of the Deluge. Passing on, then, with a graceful compliment to
- ↑ I. c. p. 11.
- ↑ Geschichte von Insekten, deutsch von Götze, iii. p. 66, et seq.
- ↑ T. viii. f. l—29.
- ↑ Monographie der Familie der Pflanzenläuse, p. 202.
- ↑ I may further refer, for information about these galls and the insect which produces them, to Burmeister, Handbuch der Entomologie, ii. 1. abtheil, p. 90, and Koch, die Pflanzenläuse (aphider), p. 317, where the insect is well figured at f. 387 and 388.
- ↑ l. c. p. 11.
