CHIMONA'NTHUS, a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Calycanthacece. The species or rather varieties of this genus are called in the gardens Japan Allspice. They are deciduous plants, with opposite pale-green sharp-pointed rather rough leaves, of an ovate-lanceolate figure. About the end of November these fall from the bushes, and are succeeded by the flowers, which appear at Christ mas-time upon the naked branches. They consist of an inferior calyx, formed of a considerable number of roundish scale-like sepals, the outermost of which are pale brown, the innermost semi-transparent, with some tinge of yellow. The petals are yellowish ovate leaves, stained with chocolate-red veins, and surrounding a small number of stamens. The fruit is a bright-brown leathery calyx-tube, including three or four oblong bright-brown polished nuts. There is probably no plant more deliciously fragrant than this, orange flowers and violets not excepted. The plant is quite hardy if protected a little by a wall or by palings. The only species is C. fragrana. Of this three varieties force the boughs of trees, &c. It is surely asking too much to require us to believe that in the course of time, uuder any circumstances, these three tendons should become consolidated into ono, and that one become implanted into a toe, to which none of the three separate tendons were before attached. The inyology of the orange, to which
I may hereafter endeavour to direct more attention than it has yet received, affords many arguments equally unanswerable against the possibility of their transmutation into a higher race of beings." From the same author we take the following summary comparison of the Chimpanzee and Orang-Outan with each other, and with man :— awe known in the gardens; the common kind, C. fragrans, with mall pale-yellow flowers; the C. f. grandiAorm, with large bright yellow flowers ; and another, C. f. parrVorm.e, with flowers resembling those of the first, except in being much smaller. The last is not worth cultivating ; both the former should be found in every garden, how ever small. Nothing can be more elegant as room-ornaments than handfuls of their round flowers placed on little porcelain trays.