BOTANY. 509 



cles. Mr. Britton states that in dioecious plants the female 

 appears to hold its foliage longer than the male. The leaves 

 of Darlingionia Calif omica and their secretions form the sub- 

 ject of a letter addressed by Mrs. R. M. Austin, of Prattsville, 

 Plumas County, Cal., to Professor Gray, and communicated 

 by him to the Botanical Gazette. She finds that the sweet 

 secretion is confined to the inner and rough portion of the 

 hoods on both sides of the " fish-tails," and extending down 

 the wino- to where it makes the outward bend. In the Ga- 

 zette is a letter, by Mr. J. G. Lemmon, on the Big Trees of 

 California, in which he gives some interesting measure- 

 ments. The famous tree called the Father of the Forest, he 

 says, has been shamefully overrated every way. Instead of 

 being 40 feet in diameter and 450 feet high, it is only 18 feet 

 in diameter at a distance of six feet from the roots, and the 

 length is only about 300 feet. The probable age of the tree is, 

 according to Mr. Lemmon, only about 1500 years! Another 

 tree, called the Livery Stable, which has received twenty-two 

 horses at a time into its hollowed base, is 84 feet in circuit. 

 In the second volume of the Bulletin of the Bussey Institu- 

 tion is a paper, by Mr. Francis Parkman, on the Hybridiza- 

 tion of Lilies. Mr. Parkman gives an account of his cross- 

 ing IAlium speciosum w T ith L. auratum, which resulted in the 

 beautiful hybrid named in his honor. He concludes that 

 lilies, when hybridized, produce offspring which show the 

 features of the male parent very slightly, or only in excep- 

 tional cases. A critical review of Mr. Parkman's paper is 

 given by Professor Gray in the American Journal of Science. 

 The Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia contain a number of important papers, among 

 which may be mentioned a communication of Mr. Thomas 

 Meehan on "The Law Governing Sex." Dr. J. Gibbons 

 Hunt gives some observations on Stapelia asterias, in which 

 he describes the manner in which flies are attracted to the 

 flower and remove the pollen masses. 



Miscellaneous. 



No special botanical work has been undertaken by the dif- 

 ferent surveys of the West during the present year. The 

 well- known botanist Dr. C. C. Parry, accompanied by Dr. 

 E. Palmer, has made an extended trip through the northern 



