Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/268

 246 HEPORT OF BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT OF BRITISH MUSEUM.

AcoRUS Calamus {vide p. 163). — In liis account of tlie history of Acorns Calamus, M. Davos has only imperfectly acknowledg-ed how much he was indebted for information to the researches of the late F. Kirschleger, who, in his ' Flore d'Alsace' (1857), not only pronounces decidedly aoaiiist its nativity in the Rhine A^alley, but also applies a large amount of infor- mation collected from the older writers, upon which his opinion was founded. As the merit of tracing the history of the plant in western Europe clearly belongs to Kirschleger, and as his book is very little known in England, it seems worth while translating the following passage from the ' Flore d'Alsace,' ii. p. 211 : — " Notwithstanding this wide distri- bution in the Rhine countries, the Acorns is not spontaneous there. In the sixteenth century this plant did not exist in middle and western Europe, ' Omnino hoc Acoro caremus,' says V. Cordus. Tragus was not acquainted with it. Camerarius only speaks of it as an exotic drug ; he says, " Nascitur in Ponto, Colchide et Galatia." Clusius, in 1574, had received living plants of Calamus aromaticus from Constantinople ; he was then cultivating it in the basins of the Garden of Vienna, where it was fiist increasing, and whence it was being distributed to various European gardens. Similarly, J. Bauliin tells us that in 1590 he was cultivating the Acorns in the garden of the Electoral Montbt51iard, having brought it from the gardens at Stuttgardt, to which it had been intro- duced from the garden of the Margrave of Baden at Pforzeira ; that, at Strasbourg, Melchior was cultivating it in 1591 in his garden, as was also Robin in the Jardin du Roy at Paris. J. Bauhin describes the mode of cultivation in damp sand near the reservoirs and trenches. It appears that Sebitz introduced the Acorus at Strasbourg, and J. Bauhin at i\iont- beliard and at Belfort. From the time of Lindern and of Mappus (1710-1750) it was very abundant in the neiglibourhood of Strasbourg, to such an extent that Mappus was able to write ' Acorus, regiouuni se|)tentrionalium incola, in Gallia non reperitur, quo tamen nostrte Al-iatiae, isti regioni licet vicinse, abunde prospexit natura." Thu*, ac- cording to Mappus, it is Nature, and not the hand of Man, which has endowed our countries with the Calamus aromaticus. Even Haller (in his 'Enumeratio' and ' Historia ') does not seem to question that the Acorus was indigenous ; and even in modern times few florists, such as Dierbach (Flor. Heidelb.) and Schubler (Flor. Wiirtemb.), are satisfied of its exotic origin. By Linnaeus (Flor. Suecica) it is described as growing ' copiose in fossis Scania?,' and by Ledebour in the northern provinces of Russia." — A. G. More.'

��g^ports*

��OFFICIAL REPORT FOR 1870 OF THE BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

By William Carruthees, F.R.S.

The principal business done in the Department during the year 1870 has consisted in the com])letion of the rearrangement in the General Herbarium of the families Graminece and Cyperacecp., in the arrangement of the CycadecB, Fiperacece and Lichenes. In the critical revision and

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