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Some Anomalous Forms of Saxifraga Virginiensis. 
Along the steep rocky bank near the east shore of upper 
Manhattan Island there is a place, about on a line with One-hun- 
dred-and-sixtieth street, where Saxifraga Virginiensis, Michx., 
still grows abundantly. On April 17th of the current year, when 
the plants were just coming into full flower, I noticed among ~ 
them one with apetalous blossoms, the conspicuous yellow anthers 
making a noticeable contrast with the pure white petals of the 
ordinary form. I collected the plant, but, unfortunately, lost it 
before a critical examination had been made. A week later I 
visited the place again, and found fully a dozen of these peculiar 
apetalous Saxifrage growing within a few feet of each other 
and only a few feet from the site of the one first observed. 
Upon close investigation these plants proved to be unques- 
tionable S. Virginiensis. In size, however, they were decidedly 
below the average of the normal form, the slender scapes being 
only two to four inches high, and there was no trace of petals or 
anything of a petaloid appearance discoverable in any of them. 
In most of the plants the flowers were few, small and singularly 
imperfect as regarded the stamens. These were a mere jumble, 
some of them only withered stumps of filaments, others sessile 
anthers greenish in color and curiously like ovaries in shape, and 
not one in twenty was normal in form or appeared capable of 
producing pollen. The pistils, though small, seemed the same 
as usual, but in general aspect the flowers were melancholy abor- 
tions, and if these specimens had been the only ones secured I 
should have concluded that the plants were merely the natural 
imperfect growth from imperfect seeds, and should have given 
them no further consideration. 
Happily, however, two out of the dozen or more collected 
were very different from their weaker brethren. In these two, 
_ which had more stocky scapes and a generally healthier look, I 
was surprised to find that nature had been creditably successful 
in establishing a new and definite order of things: In other 
words, the variation from the normal structure of the flower con- 
sisted in the regular conversion of the petals into stamens—that 
is to say, a single stamen stood opposite each calyx-lobe, and an 
_ anteposed pair opposite each calyx-sinus. This made the total 
