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arise in the homogeneous solid substance of the chlorophyll bodies." They are at first visible as paints, gradually increase in size, and finally may so completely fill up the space of the chlorophyll grain that the green substance is represented only by a fine coating on the mature starch grain; even this costing may, under certain circumstances, disappear.”

The history in brief of the chlorophyll body, and, allowing for variations, the result of varying conditions and circumstances, would seem to be that the starch granule is first separated from the protoplasm by the ordinary vital processes; and then, according to conditions and circumstances, either becomes pigmented and assumes the condition of chlorophyll, or else remains, as it does usually when excluded from light, an unpigmented granular body, and, growing by intussusception into the perfect, enveloped starch grain, with its ordinary physical characters of hilium and concentric markings, and having in this state its known and recognised chemical characteristics. This view receives some confirmation from the following passage from Rosanoff.^[1] "The formation of the grains of the chlorophyll is not always contemporaneous with that of its colouring matter; they may be at first colourless, (as in Vancheria and Bryopsis, according to Hofmeister.) or yellow (in the case of leaves of Monocotyledons or Dicotyledons imperfectly exposed to light or in the process of development.) and may afterwards became green."

Of course it must not be assumed by any means that no pigmented red, (Rhodospermeæ, &c.,) green, or yellow matter occurs except in the form of regular granules, for amylaceous products are known and acknowledged to be often amorphous. The acknowledged chlorophyll pigmented matters and particles too are also known to occur sometimes in "bands, stars, or irregular masses." In fact there is no limit to this informality, variation, or irregularity: moreover. light itself can be dispensed with in some cases. In Angiosperms light is understood to be essential to pigmentation or chlorisation, but fern-leaves and the cotyledons of Gymnasperms will become pigmented without light.

The conclusions which I first made known in 1866, and which I may here partly reproduce, were that the almost universal green of nature Is essentially amylaceous, and can, therefore, supply fuel, at least in the matter of food, to animals. Though partly decolourised in dried grass, the same amylaceous principle is yet present. The nutritive properties of hay, which can of itself support animal life, can scarcely depend on the cellular tissue alone, and certainly not exclusively on the small proportion of nitrogen contained, nor on the fruits which, in the minor grasses, are insignificant. On the other hand, amylaceous matters are known to be intensely nutritive, as affording one main element of animal food, and not only so, but those parts of plants in which this proximate principle is concentrated are nutritive in proportion to the amount of that concentration.

Incomplete and imperfect as it must needs be from the early date of its publication, and from the fact that our staff of observers is as yet not fully organised, still the main features of the Rainfall of the past year in the Midland counties may be gathered from the table which we print below. In it the stations are grouped in counties, and the fall at a few other localities is given at the end for the purpose of comparison. For the