The stratum of ether decanted off is mixed in a test-tube with a drop of acetic acid. A red color appears if the slightest trace of magenta is present. The shaking must not be too violent, lest an emulsion should be formed. If the wine is colored with archil, on prolonged heating, after the addition of ammonia, it is decolorized. If it is then let cool and shaken a little, the red color returns. If the wool is taken out of the hot liquid after the red color has disappeared, and exposed to the air, it takes a red color. But if it is quickly taken out of the liquid and at once washed, there remains merely a trace of color in the wool. If these precautions are observed, magenta can be distinguished from archil with certainty according to König's method. As the coloring-matter of archil is not precipitated by baryta and magnesia, but changed to a purple, the baryta method, recommended by Pasteur, Balard, and Wurtz, and the magnesia test, are useless. Magenta may in course of time be removed by the precipitates formed in the wine. It is therefore necessary to test not merely the clear liquid, but the sediment, if any.--_Dr. B. Haas, in Budermann's Centralblatt.--Analyst_. * * * * * PANAX VICTORIÆ. Panax Victoriæ is a compact and charming plant, which sends up numbers of stems from the bottom in place of continually growing upward and thus becoming ungainly; it bears a profusion of elegantly curled, tasseled, and variegated foliage, very catching to the eye, and unlike any of its predecessors. The other, P. dumosum, is of similar habit, the foliage being crested and fringed after the manner of some of our rare crested ferns.--_The Gardeners' Chronicle_. [Illustration: PANAX VICTORIÆ.] * * * * * A NOTE ON SAP. [Footnote: Read at an evening meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society, London, April 4, 1883.] By Professor ATTFIELD, F.R.S. Beneath a white birch tree growing in my garden I noticed, yesterday evening, a very wet place on the gravel path, the water of which was obviously being fed by the cut extremity of a branch of the birch about an inch in diameter and some ten feet from the ground. I afterward found that exactly fifteen days ago circumstances rendered necessary the removal of the portion of the branch which hung over the path, 4 or 5 feet being still left on the tree. The water or sap was dropping fast from the branch, at the rate of sixteen large drops per minute, each drop twice or thrice the size of a "minim," and neither catkins nor leaves had yet expanded. I decided that some interest would attach to a determination both of the rate of flow of the fluid and of its chemical composition, especially at such a stage of the tree's life.