306 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1893. 



shriveling of the style shows that fertilization had been accom- 

 plished during the night, and that the furnishing of the honeyed 

 sweets to the insect visitors was a purely gratuitous act, for which 

 the plant seemingly receives no compensation. 



The style is bulbous at the base. The style on withering disar- 

 ticulates at the apex of the bulb which remains as part of the seed 

 vessel. Morphologically the bulb may represent an arrested node 

 of growth, and it would not be surprising in some monstrous 

 forms to find appendages develop from it or closely related gen- 

 era, with some form of structure in which some organs developed 

 from a position such as the bulb occupies. 



The strongly adhesive power of the gelatinous pollen is indicated 

 by the difficulty the style branches have in separating. The lower 

 portion spreads while inside the staminal tube ; but the apej| still 

 remains in contact, so that after the style branches have become 

 quite clear of the tube, the branches, still together at the apex, form 

 a diamond-shaped termination to the style. If a lance separates 

 the mass of pollen, and thus liberates the apices, the style branches 

 fly back with considerable force. 



The style branches, after being drawn down into the corolla tube, 

 were still of the same proportionate length with the undivided por- 

 tion of the style, as when fully expanded : again showing that the 

 withdrawal was not due to any irritating or contracting power at 

 the base, but to a uniform shriveling in all its parts. These 

 advances of the different parts of flowers and rests while others 

 advance, are extremely interesting. It is now twenty-three years since 

 I recorded similar behavior in the flowers of the compass plant, Sil- 

 phium laciniatum, 1 and I regret that neither I nor others have fol- 

 lowed far in the path of observation there marked out. 



Floccose Leaves of Antennaria peantaginifolia. 



In the midst of a large quantity of Antennaria plantaginijolia in 

 Mount Desert Island, Me., while numbers had the leaves green on 

 the upper surface, many plants were so densely floccose that no 

 green could be seen. The deprivation of the light was complete, and 

 I could form no conception as to how the green could be equally 

 dense beneath this thick growth of wood, as in the leaves exposed. 

 The text-books say " leaves silky-woolly when young, at length green 

 above." But the woolly plants seem woolly to the last, while the 



1 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, 1870, p. 117. 



