317 



clear that the immense amount of sweet secretion, or the honeyed 

 fragrance, can serve any such purpose. The enormous number 

 of flowers produced keep the bees busily engaged on one tree; 

 and, as the use of pollen by flowers of one tree of pollen from 

 the flowers of the same tree is not cross-fertilization, no benefit 

 from that score is derived from insect visitors. 



The use of the dried bract as a wing to aid In the distribution of 

 the seed, can scarcely be the sole purpose. Most of the seeds, 

 though many of the early ones are light, separate and fall to the 

 ground before the common peduncle is detached. In many cases 

 when detached it flies away with no seed. When it has one or 

 more seeds developed, it does not go far, very little farther than 

 the seed can be carried in a high wind without it. 



But the lifting power of the growing bract is apparent, and 

 though It is difficult to understand under modern views of evolu- 

 tion how the adaptations are of much use to the plant, it will, 

 perhaps, be more difficult to beheve that the adaptations have 

 been made solely in the interest of the insect world, though, so 

 far, the facts barely admit of any other interpretation. 



My view is that nature has not made variety in structure and 

 character solely for the peculiar advantage of the plant itself, but 

 that a variety of purposes are involved. It would be absurd to 

 say the various forms of plants have not, in general, a relation 

 to individual good. Often they have none whatever; but 

 they have a relation, at times wholly, to the general good 

 in which the plant is then a mere incident in the purpose 

 and at times they have but to create a variety for variety sake, 

 which is a necessary element in the order of things. 



Thos. Meehan. 



The '^Bulblets" of Lycopodium lucidulum', Michx. 



The description of L. liLcidnhim in Gray's Manual (ed. 1867, 

 P- ^71) closes with the statement, '* Little bulblets form in the 

 axils of the leaves of young shoots {Austin, RotJirocky The 

 Citation of authorities evidently implies that Gray had not seen 

 these *' bulblets" himself, and as I have failed to discover any 

 niention of them elsewhere, even in the writings of Baker, Under- 

 '^vood and others who have made a special study of pteridophyta, 



