quired a colored calyx or flower-cup instead, which answers exactly the same purpose. In other words, having no petals, it has been obliged to pour the purple pigment with which it allures its butterfly friends into the part answering to the green covering of the salad-burnet. It has a head of small colored blossoms, extremely like those of the sister species in many respects, only purple instead of green. Moreover, to suit its new habits, it has its cup much more tubular than that of the salad-burnet; its stamens do not hang out to the wind, but are enclosed within the tube; and the pistil has its sensitive surface shortened into a little sticky knob instead of being split up into a number of long fringes or plumes. All these peculiarities of course depend upon its return from the new and bad habit of wind-fertilization to the older and more economical plan of getting the pollen carried from head to head by bees or butterflies. The two flowers grow also exactly where we should expect them to do. The salad-burnet loves dry and wind-swept pastures or rocky hill sides, where it has free elbow-room to shed its pollen to the breeze; the stanch-wound takes rather to moist and rich meadows, where many insects are always to be found flitting about from blossom to blossom of the honey-bearing daisies or the sweet-scented clover.

Perhaps it may be asked, How do I know that the salad-burnet is not descended from the stanch-wound, rather than the stanch-wound from the saladburnet? At first sight this might seem the simpler explanation of the facts, but I merely mention it to show briefly what are the sort of grounds on which such questions must be decided. The stanchwound is certainly a later development than the salad-burnet, and for this reason: It has only four stamens, while the parent plant has several, like all the other roses. Now, it would be almost impossible for the flower first to lose the numerous stamens of the ordinary rosy type, and then to regain them anew as occasion demanded. It is easy enough to It is easy enough to lose any part or organ, but it is a very different thing to develop it over again. Thus the great-burnet, having once lost its petals, has never recovered them, but has been obliged to color its calyx instead. It is much more natural, there

fore, to suppose that the stanch-wound, with its few stamens and its clumsy device of a colored calyx instead of petals, is descended from the salad-burnet, than that the pedigree should run the other way; and there are many minor considerations which tend in the same direction. Most correctly of all, we ought perhaps to say that the one form is probably a descendant of ancestors more or less like the other, but that it has lost its ancestors' acquired habits of wind-fertilization, and reverted to the older methods of the whole tribe. Still, it has not been able to replace the lost petals.

I ought likewise to add that there are yet other roses even more degenerate than the burnets, such as the little creeping parsley-piert, a mere low moss-like plant, clinging to the crannies of limestone rocks or growing on the top of earthy walls, with tiny green petal-less flowers, so small that they can hardly be distinguished with the naked eye. These, however, I cannot now find space to describe at length; and, indeed, they are of little interest to anybody save the professional botanist. But I must just take room to mention that if I had employed exotic examples as well as the familiar English ones, I might have traced the lines of descent in some cases far more fully. It is perhaps better, however, to confine our attention to fairly well-known plants, whose peculi arities we can all carry easily in our mind's eye, rather than to overload the question with technical details about unknown or unfamiliar species, whose names convey no notion at all to an English reader. When we consider, too, that the roses form only one family out of the ninety families of flowering plants to be found in England alone, it will be clear that such a genealogy as that which I have here endeavored roughly to sketch out is but one among many interesting plant pedigrees which might be easily constructed on evolutionary principles. Indeed, the roses are a comparatively small group by the side of many others, such as the peaflowers, the carrot tribe, and the deadnettles. Thus, we have in England only forty-five species of roses, as against over two hundred species of the daisy family. Nevertheless, I have chosen the rose tribe as the best example of a

genealogical study of plants, because most probably a larger number of roses are known to unbotanical readers than

is the case with any other similar division of the vegetable world.-Belgravia Magazine.

WE have somewhere read of a system. of cure in which the only means used was heat. The principle upon which this system was founded had an appearance of plausibility. It was expressed in a sort of motto: "Heat is life-cold is death.' Hot substances, such as ginger, Cayenne pepper, etc., were prescribed for internal use. Hot baths of various sorts were applied externally. While it is well known that extremes of heat, no less than extremes of cold, are destructive of both life and health, it may well be admitted that a moderate administration of either might be beneficial in many cases. It is on a modification of this principle that hydropathy is based; not, as for a time misnamed, the Cold Water Cure. Water of various degrees of temperature, and air as high as two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, are employed, according to the effect desired.

There can be little doubt as to the advantage of a due amount of heat so far at least as the preservation of health is concerned. And in cases where health has been interfered with through defect of heat, a supply of heat in proper degree must be beneficial. And it may even be allowed that, under certain circumstances, an extreme degree of heat may be used with advantage-as in the case of the Turkish bath.

When a person swallows a dose of Cayenne pepper, or enters the hot-room of a Turkish bath, he experiences the effects of artificial heat. When he partakes of a meal of ordinary food, or exposes himself to the rays of the sun, the heat he derives from either source is natural. The combustion of carbon in respiration, and the burning of coal in the furnace of the bath, are very similar processes, both consisting essentially of the chemical combination of oxygen gas with carbon. Stephenson termed coal, 'bottled sunshine;" and the same may be said of Cayenne pepper and all similar substances from which heat can be evolved.

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Science has done much to utilize and conserve the heat derivable from respiration and from the combustion of fuel in our stoves and grates. By means of suitable clothing and muscular exercise, we husband the heat produced within us; and by properly constructed fireplaces and dwelling-houses, economize the heat of our fires. It is very questionable if science has done as much in utilizing and controlling the immense amount of heat continually radiating from the sun. Even in our temperate zone, during our brief summer, the poet makes the sun "shoot full perfection through the swelling year;" which is the literal truth. But at what expense and pains do our busy housewives" prevent his benign rays from penetrating our dwellings. Windowblinds of every form have become a great article of modern trade. The advantages obtained from cheapened glass in the form of enlarged windows, are in great ineasure lost. The fear of faded colors in carpets, hangings, and other upholstery, deprives our apartments of a healthy influence from the great source of light and' heat. On a smaller scale, might it not be said that the parasol (sun-guard) saves the complexion of our fair kinswomen at the expense of their health and vigor.

There are some indications of a more rational appreciation of the value of sunshine both as a preservative and restorative of health. The late Mr. David Urquhart, M.P., and Secretary to the British Embassy at Constantinople, who acquired vast experience in the East, attached great importance to the rays of the sun as a means of cure. He affirmed that he cured even consumption by means of exposure of the body of the patient to sunlight, without any other remedy. In a work on the Turkish Bath, by Sir John Fife, senior surgeon to the Newcastle Infirmary, in which he gives many passages from the writings of Mr. Urquhart, this agency of sun

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shine is introduced. The experience of a New York physician is quoted to the effect that he had so many facts illustrating the power of the sun's rays in curing certain diseases, that he seriously thought of publishing a work to be entitled the Sun-cuje." He says: "I have assisted many dyspeptic, neuralgic, rheumatic, and hypochondriacal people into health by the sun-cure. He mentions the case of an overwrought lawyer who was suffering from partial paralysis. His right leg and hip were reduced in size, with constant pain in the loins. He was obliged, in coming upstairs, to raise the left foot first, and drag the right foot after it. He told the doctor he had been failing for several years, closing with: "My work is done. At sixty I find myself worn out." The doctor directed him to lie down under a large window, and allow the sunshine to reach every part of his body. He was to begin with ten minutes a day, gradually increasing it to an hour. His habits were not materially altered in any other respect. The result was that in six months he came running upstairs, like a vigorous man of forty, and declared, with sparkling eyes: 'I have - twenty years more of work in me.'

Mr. Urquhart mentions the experience of a correspondent of his, who had been recommended by Dr. Proel, at the baths of Gastein, to try air-baths in the neighboring forest. At first, he used to remain for two hours undressed in the shadiest part of the forest. He confidently asserts that his health derived the greatest benefit from this practice. But on another visit to the continent, he determined on the addition of what he terms another element of power-full sunshine. He says: "I am easily affected by the sun; the consequence being headache and derangement of stomach. I found, however, when the body was entirely exposed to the sunshine, and without even the head being covered, or the pit of the stomach -an equally sensitive part-being sheltered from the rays, that I was not in the slightest degree unpleasantly affected. But on resuming my clothes, or even a portion of my clothing, I instantly experienced the symptoms I have alluded to, and was obliged quickly to get into the shade. I reversed the experiment, and

proved the fact." He further describes the sensation of sunshine on the body as very agreeable-genial warmth, not heat, being felt. He noticed, on covering any portion of it with a single fold of light clothing or linen, that the heat on that part became intolerable. These sunshine-baths lasted from half an hour to an hour and a half in ordinary summer heat. He also mentions a pricking and itching sensation all over the body, with redness of the skin, which followed these sunshine-baths. These symptoms lasted a couple of days; but he used no remedy, only he did not try any more baths till they had disappeared.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Urquhart met one of the most celebrated physicians in Europe, Dr. Scanzoni of Würzberg. He was much interested in the narrative of the sunshine-bath, and anticipated the statement respecting the head remaining unaffected. The doctor explained it by the equal diffusion of the sunshine over the whole body, by which the action of the blood would not be determined merely to the head. The doctor also gave him to understand that the greatest power is practically the most ignored by medical science—that it is unreasonable not to believe that the great centre of action in nature can exert vast influence on the human organism, and develop the energies and resources of life.

The curative properties of heat were observed fifty years ago in the experience of a French physician, who fortunately committed the results to the press. Dr. Gosse of Geneva published a book entitled Des Maladies Rheumatoïdes (Geneva and Paris, 1826). In this work, the author speaks highly of the remedial value of heat. He says: The excitant which plays the most important rôle in the phenomena whether of health or of disease, is caloric-a fluid imponderable and incompressible, which pervades all bodies, and vivifies all organized existences. No other agent can be compared with this one in the treatment of rheumatoid disorders. It is, so to say, the soul of this treatment, and all other means can only be regarded as subordinate. Who can tell if even those substances which we define as excitant are not indebted to its presence for their properties? At least, we find among them principles eminently combustible,

and which disengage a considerable quantity of light and of caloric." Dr. Dr. Gosse regards the restoring the action of the skin as the modus operandi of heat as a remedy. He says this explains the immense advantages derived by the Greeks and Romans from the use of the bath. While still employed by the Russians and the nations of the East, he regretted its neglect in the central parts of Europe, where a less equable.climate renders rheumatic affections more frequent and inveterate. He says: We ought to put up prayers that the European governments may favor the introduction of such public establishments, and so bring within the reach of the citizens unendowed with fortune this real panacea for the larger portion of the evils that assail mankind.'

It may be mentioned that whether the theory of heat current when Dr. Gosse wrote, or that now more generally received, be the correct one, the practical value of heat as a remedial agency is in nowise affected.

It is now about twenty years since the hot-air bath was introduced as a curative agency into the Newcastle Infirmary. Sir John Fife, senior surgeon to the Infirmary, had experienced the benefit of a private bath in Northumberland, in which he was treated as a patient. He brought it under the notice of the Pathological Society of Newcastle, and also the House Committee of the Infirmary. The Duke of Northumberland lent his influence to the movement, having witnessed, during his Eastern travels, the value of the bath. The result was the construction of a hot-air bath in the hospital. The Report of the Infirmary bears ample testimony to the value of the bath in a great variety of cases considered suitable for treatment.

The hot-air bath has also been found suitable for the treatment of mental dis

was in a desperate state, menaced with madness and paralysis, and apparently dying from the extent of kidney disease. Dr. Robertson states that the bath saved the, patient's life, and restored him to reason. He believes its medical uses to be very great. Of its curative power in the early stages of consumption, he has had several examples, and is of opinion. that if used at a sufficiently high temperature—a hundred and seventy to two hundred degrees the results will astonish us all.

Mr. Urquhart explains that this high. temperature is quite endurable when the heat is radiating. Heat which is transmitted through flues is said to be more oppressive at high temperatures than heat which radiates directly from a heated surface such as a stove. He does not profess to explain the reason; but he thinks radiating heat more nearly resembles the rays of the sun, and impresses one with a sort of electrical action. This seems to correspond with a fact quoted, on the authority of Sir David Brewster, in regard to the effect of sunbeams on magnets. Professor Barlocci found that an armed natural lodestone which would carry one and a half Roman pounds, had its power nearly doubled by twenty-four hours' exposure to the strong light of the sun. tedeschi found that an artificial horseshoe lodestone which carried thirteen and a half ounces, carried three and a half more by three days' exposure, and at last arrived to thirty-one ounces by continuing in the sun's light. He found that while the strength increased in oxidated magnets, it diminished in those which were not oxidated, the diminution becoming insensible when the lodestone was highly polished. He now concentrated the solar rays upon the lodestone by means of a lens; and he found that both in oxidated and polished magnets, they acquire strength when their north pole is exposed to the sun's rays, and lose strength when the south pole is exposed.

M. Zan

It is well known that the action of the hot-air bath on the human frame operates through the skin. In many diseases, the skin is under-active, and requires increased circulation of blood. The congestion of internal organs is thus relieved, and digestion, respiration, etc., promoted.-Chambers's Journal.

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