157 
+ 
plain the great nutritive value of clover hay. Indeed, bacteriol- 
ogists are now beginning to wonder if it has not been through the 
agency of these micro-organisms that the large nitrate beds of the 
world have been deposited. The nitrate beds of Chili-are vast in 
extent, and it has been already suggested that these beds owe 
their deposition to the agency of some microbes, to bacteria asso- 
ciated with higher plants which have grown in these localities in 
past ages. If so, we see even more forcibly that at the very 
foundation the life of the world is dependent on the action of bac- 
teria. 
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY. 
On the Casting-off of the Tips of Branches of Certain Trees— 
Part Il, 
By Auc. F. FOERSTE. 
(PLATES CXLVII. anpD CXLVIII.) 
In “‘Gray’s Structural and Systematic Botany,’*page 44, may 
be found the following passage: 
“When a terminal bud is formed* this is commonly the strong- 
€st or among the stronger. But in many cases it habitually or 
commonly fads to appear.t{ In the Elm the bud axillary to the 
last leaf of the season takes its place. In the common Lilac a 
pair of buds, which were in the axils of the uppermost of the op- 
posite leaves, seem to replace the terminal bud, which se/dom+ de- 
velops.” 
On page 49 are the following words: 
“In other cases, on the contrary, the branches grow on idefi- 
nitely until arrested by the cold of autumn; . . . the later-formed 
upper portion most commonly perishing from the apex downward — 
for a certain length 2x the winter.t The Rose and Raspberry, and, 
among trees, the Sumac and Honey-Locust, are good illustrations 
of this sort.”* 
In the September (1892) number of this journal the writer had 
occasion to show that the reason why the terminal bud fads to 
* Incidentally the author is chiefly referring to the scaly buds of ri Se enon 
+ Not italicized in the original. 
