8(J 
Shetimasha: 
Prunus Persica, wipt (radical.) 
P, Americana, wipt-ndkht-sebu, 'little peach.' 
Cherokee (Huron-Iroquois?): 
- Prunus Persica, kwanu^ (radical.) 
P. Americana, kwamitiasti, 'little peach.' 
Has the " Indian peach " described by Lawson been perpetuated ? 
W. R. G. 
On the General Exuberance of Pollen. — It seems to me, as I 
read, that a want of power to make legitimate deductions from facts 
is a common weakness with otherwise intelligent observers, and this 
occurs to me particularly when the subject happens to have relation 
to the cross-fertilization of flowers. Before me is a paper contributed 
to that excellent serial, the London Gardeners' Chronicle^ on the 
" cross-breeding of cereals," in which the author lays great stress on 
the fact that this class of plants — one may say the whole order of 
Graminese consists of self-fertilizers. He points out how the pollen 
begins to shed, and the stigmas are in receptive condition before the 
florets expand, and that the objects for which anthers are formed are 
fully accomplished before the stamens make their appearance outside 
the ear." But after this the anthers give out to the atmosphere an 
enormous amount of waste pollen, as any one walking through a grain 
field at that particular period has reason to know by his well smudged 
clothing. It has been found that an anther of wheat contains 6,864 
grains, and that it takes 390,000 of them to weight but one grain. Rye 
pollen is heavier than that of wheat, or is yielded in larger quantity, 
for he gives 2 cwt. as the product per acre, while 50 lbs. is the pol- 
len-product of an acre of wheat. He then emphasizes the fact that 
wheat, barley and oats are fertilized before the anthers are visible 
outside. After a while the reason for the usual abundance of pollen 
IS sought for, and our author concludes "that the clouds of pollen m 
excess of customary requirements are but the exuberant provision by 
which nature has rendered the assurance of reproduction doubly 
secure." Exuberant is a good word, but " doubling " when the figures 
are 6,864 to the i required, is certainly placing the lion's share of 
the two halves of the double on the side of "exuberance." But what 
one who is accustomed to look for logical sequence can see in ''assur- 
ance of reproduction " by giving pollen to the winds in the case of 
plants that self-fertilize— fertilize before the florets expand— is inex- 
plicable. I think it must be admitted that not even with exuber- 
ance before us can this cloud of pollen have relation to any service 
to the plant, individually or collectively. I would submit that the 
reasons given in my Montreal address are more logical, /. e., that plants 
are made to contribute to the general good, just as we are. 
Thomas Meehan. 
Notelets.— M 
at- 
r. George Taft of Uxbridge, Mass., has called my at- 
tention to a peculiarity in the leaves of an American elm whicn 
stands before his house. The tree is a large and very old one. 1"^ 
