A list of plants, which have flowered in the conservatory of the Botanic Garden, Cambridge, in the months of January and February. (Communicated by Mr Nuttall.)

* The following description of this substance we extract from Mr Shepard's letter. "It occurs in a green talcose rock, having a slaty structure with veins of serpentine of a dark colour running through it occasionally in various directions. The Anthophyllite exists in such abundance in the rock, as to constitute the greater part of it. It is both massive, and in long circular prisms, which are generally disposed in a radiating form. Its masses possess a highly crystalline structure and very readily admit a cleavage parallel to the lateral planes of a rhombic prism of 125° and 55° There is also a cleav age apparently perpendicular to the axis of the prism, but it is attended with some difficulty, and the planes produced by it are not very brilliant or perfect. Its colour is hair brown of various shades. It possesses a shining nearly pseudo-metallic lustre. It is translucent. It scratches fluate of lime and glass; the latter, however, with difficulty. Before the blow-pipe it is infusible."

The mineral supposed to be Iolite, Mr Shepard describes as follows. It occurs in small masses which, with few exceptions, are amorphous, and of an oval form. Occasionally it is found crystallized; but from the smaltness and irregularity of the crystals, their precise form cannot be discerned. None of these crystals admit of any cleavage, nor can appearances of natural joints be discovered in any direction whatever. Its fracture is uneven, and its lustre vitreous. It scratches adularia and appears to be of the same hardness with Quartz. It is translucent. Its colour is a pale blue Its specific gravity is 2.6. When thrown in the state of powder upon a hot shovel, it phosphoresces slightly with a reddish light. Alone, before the blow-pipe, it fuses into a bluish glass, though with difficulty; with borax it fuses slowly into a colourless glass. It is found imbedded in Cleavelandite, and is often accompanied with Indicolite, Rubellite, and rose coloured Mica."

THE

Boston Journal

OF

PHILOSOPHY AND THE ARTS.

ART. XLIV.-Contribution to a Natural and Economical History of the Coco-Nut Tree. By Mr. HENRY MARSHALL, Surgeon to the Forces, and Author of Notes on the Medical Topography and Diseases of the interior of Ceylon. [Mem. Wer. Soc. Edin.] (Concluded from page 380.)

In

MANY useful products are derived from the flower and fruit of this tree. By a peculiar manipulation the flower yields a rich saccharine juice, convertible into arrack or sugar. The word arrack, or arak, or rack, is probably a corruption of the the Arabic word uruq, spirit or juice, indefinitely; whence we may infer that the art of distillation was conveyed from Arabia to India and the eastern Archipelago. We are informed that, in the Ladrone Islands, it is called uraca. Ceylon, and many other parts of India, the term arrack is employed in a sense similar to that with which we use the phrase spiritous liquors. Distilled spirits, of whatever kind, obtain this denomination through a great part of Asia, and along the northern coast of Africa. In the Singhalese language, sugar, manufactured from palm-juice, is called hackurur, which is commonly corrupted by foreigners into jagery, and may be the origin of the Arabic word sukker. A Sanscrit scholar has suggested, that sugar may be derived from the Sanscrit word goor (sweet); the superlative of which, he tells me, is seogoor (sweetest).

Sweet juice is extracted from the unexpanded flower, in the following manner :-A man, in colloquial language, called a "Toddy-drawer," cuts off the point of the spadix, and ties