HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



21 



angustifolium, though the flowers seemed to me too 

 large. I did not see it anywhere else in the island. 

 I am sorry I have no specimens, but perhaps some 

 Isle of Wight reader can tell me if I am right or 

 wrong. — II. J. Perrett, Farnham, Surrey. 



Origin of Flowers. — In the theory of the origin 

 of flowers, the origin of sexes in plants cannot be left 

 out. Most flowers have their male and female organs 

 continued within the same corolla, or, at any rate, 

 they exist upon the same plant. The philosophical 

 botanist is led to speculate upon the long line of 

 influences, physical and biological, which in the past 

 period of the earth's history caused flowers to assume 

 so many different sexual characteristics. Recently it 

 has been discovered that even the enemies of plants 

 — such as parasitic blights and mildew — may, in the 

 long run, affect the floral characters of plants. I 

 observe that one of the most painstaking of our 

 experimental botanists has recently submitted to the 

 scientific committee of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society the results of some observations and experi- 

 ments which bear upon this interesting subject. He 

 artificially impregnated a female specimen of our 

 common white Campion with spores from a parasitic 

 fungus {Ustilago violacca) he found growing on the 

 anthers of a male plant of the red Campion {Lychnis 

 diimia). The hybrid offspring raised therefrom were 

 perfectly healthy, but the female parent plant itself 

 {Lychnis vespertina) bore nothing but male flowers in 

 the following year, and every one of these was 

 affected by the parasitic fungus above mentioned. 

 In the discussion which followed the reading of the 

 papers, it was argued that whatever tends to lessen 

 the vitality or vigour of the female floral organs may 

 heighten those of the males, as occurs frequently in 

 hermaphrodite flowers. When flowers are abnor- 

 mally sexual, then the lost sex may appear should 

 the energy be diverted from the sex usually present. 

 Further, that if the constitution of the flower be 

 weakened, as by the attacks of a fungus like that 

 above mentioned, then the plant may be one capable 

 of forming stamens, as the male sex is often correlated 

 with a lessened degree of vitality. 



Erratum.— On page 278 (No. for December, 

 1889), second column, line 3, for 1889 read 1884. 



GEOLOGY, &C. 



Important Discovery of Fossil Insects. — 

 At the last meeting of the Entomological Society 

 of London, Mr. H. : Goss read a communication 

 received by him from Professor S. H. Scudder, of 

 Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., on the subject of his 

 recent discoveries of some thousands of fossil insects, 

 chiefly Coleoptera, in Florissant, Western Colorado, 

 and Wyoming. Professor Westwood remarked on 

 the extreme rarity of fossil Lepidoptera, and called 



attention to a recent paper, by Mr. A. G. Butler, in 

 the Proc. Zool. Soc, 1889, in which the author 

 described a new genus of fossil moths belonging to 

 the Geometrid family Euschemidae, from a specimen 

 obtained by Mr. A. Court Smith at Gurnet Bay, Isle 

 of Wight. 



Winds and Stalactites.— It maybe interesting 

 and instructive to many ofyour readers to notice how 

 the prevailing direction of the wind is recorded by 

 stalactites, a cross section of which will often reveal 

 an eccentric structure, due, undoubtedly, to some 

 external agent— which can be no other than the wind 

 — blowing against the moist cone, causing the greater 

 part of the external watery layer, which is charged 

 with calcareous matter, to be carried to, and, ulti- 

 mately, set on the side opposite to that from which 

 the current comes, thus causing a greater amount of 

 deposition of matter on one side than the other, i.e., 

 if the prevailing current be from a northerly direction, 

 the greater radius will be towards the south side of 

 the stalactite, and vice versa, and this, at different 

 parts of the cone, will be found to vary, as the wind 

 veered. It will also be noticed that the layers in the 

 greater radius are somewhat loose and cancellated, 

 while those of the shorter one are thin and compact. 

 — G. Rees, Aberystwyth. 



A New Fossil Reptile. — At a recent meeting of 

 the Zoological Society, Mr. R. Lydekker read a paper 

 on the remains of a theriodont reptile from the Karoo 

 System of the Orange Free State ; the remains 

 described were an associated series of vertebra; and 

 limb-bones of a comparatively large theriodont, which 

 was probably different from any described form ; the 

 humerus was of the normal theriodont type, and quite 

 distinct from the one on which the genus Propappus 

 had been founded, which the author considered to 

 belong to a form closely allied to, if not generally 

 identical with, Pariasaurus. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Colour of Eggs. — Concerning the removal of 

 the colour of eggs — I was washing a turkey's egg and 

 not using any undue pressure, when I found a large 

 portion of the reddish-brown spots had disappeared, 

 and the egg had a very patchy and spoilt appearance. 

 — A. Whitworth, Southport. 



The Horniman Museum. — There are Museums 

 and Museums, the term being of such all-embracing 

 significance as to be applicable to any repository of 

 curiosities whatsoever, from the wax-work effigies of 

 Madame Tussaud to the vast aggregation of treasures 

 constituting the British Museum. One of the 

 completest collections of interesting objects gathered 

 together by any private individual, however, is that 

 of Mr. F. J. Horniman, at Surrey House Museum, 

 Forest Hill, where the owner's cultivated taste and 

 well-directed research are represented by a display of 

 valuable objects, every one of which has some story 

 to tell, or some instruction to convey. The garnering 

 of these treasures from all the ends of the earth has 



