HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



43 



seen it in its so-called sub-imago or pseudimago, 

 stage. Westwood says that, after casting the pupa 

 skin, " they then make their way flying with difficulty 

 to the shore, where they affix themselves to the trunks 

 of trees, stems of rushes, walls or even persons stand- 

 ing on the bank, when they again cast off a very 

 delicate pellicle in which they had been entirely 

 encased After this process the wings, dis- 

 engaged from the outer covering, assume a bright 

 appearance, and the tails grow to twice their previous 

 length." I find the above quotation in Vol. ii. of 

 Standard Natural History, Professor J. S. Kingsley 

 editor.—^. E. V— U.S.A. 



Helix Pygivlea and H. Aculeata : — Illness 

 prevented me seeing the December number of 

 Science-Gossip till last night, where I saw that 

 Mr. Arthur May field records Helix pygmaa and //. 

 aculeata as having been taken by him in the neighbour- 

 hood of Norwich, he thought for the first time. If 

 he looks in the " Zoologist," March, 1850, he will find 

 both species reared by my father, and also in the 

 ' Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalist's 

 Society," 1872, page47, by myself. No doubt he has 

 overlooked these two lists of land and fresh-water 

 shells of the neighbourhood of Norwich. — John B. 

 Bridgman, F.L.S. 



BOTANY. 



Flora of Barra and South Uist. — A capital 

 paper by Mr. Alex. Somerville, B.Sc, appears in 

 Transitions of the Natural History Society in Glasgow 

 on the above subject. Mr. Somerville has worked 

 the flora of those islands well, and herein gues a 

 sketch of their physical structure, and minute accounts 

 of all the plants he collected down to the freshwater 

 algse. 



The Bee and the Willow. — In Mr. Darbish ire's 

 note in Science-Gossip for December, he supports 

 Midler's view that the willow is entomophilous I 

 think there can be very little doubt that this is the 

 case, having regard (1) to the " special modifications " 

 quoted from M idler by Mr. Darbishire, which seem 

 to have been obviously developed to attract insects, 

 and (2) to the exceptionally wide circle of insect 

 visitors, which I quoted from Midler in my note on 

 this subject (Science-Gossip, August, 1889). As to 

 the question of the superior attractiveness of the male, 

 and the consequent likelihood that the female would 

 not get visited, I cannot say I think Mr. Darbishire's 

 proposed explanation is a good one. Is there any 

 reason for supposing that a bee would take up so 

 much pollen as to be obliged to get rid of some ? 

 Have bees ever been known to do this ? It certainly 

 seems a most unlikely supposition. Again even if 

 this were the case, it is improbable that instinct is 

 inherited experience, and I do not see that we are the 



least justified in assuming that either instinct, or 

 experience gained during its lifetime, would prompt 

 the bee to go to the female to get rid of the supposed 

 excess of pollen. The female probably gets fewer 

 visits than the male, but I should say it gets quite 

 enough for pollination to be effected in very many 

 cases, from the number of bees I have observed on 

 the female spikes of S. cap)-ea on a bright April 

 morning. 1 do not see that any special explanation 

 is needed to account for the bee visiting the female. 

 Compared with the general state of vegetation at the 

 time of flowering, the female spikes are sufficiently 

 attractive, and what more natural than when an insect 

 has been over all the male bushes in a particular spot 

 it should turn to the females ? In an entomophilous 

 dioecious plant, it is indeed absolutely necessary that 

 the male should be the most conspicuous. I am 

 inclined to think, after all, that Mr. Henslow is right 

 about the willow being a degraded entomophilous 

 plant. He says : " There is little doubt but that all 

 wind-fertilised angiosperms are degradations from 

 insect fertilised flowers " ("Floral Structures," p. 266); 

 and this is a view now held, I think, by many 

 botanists. The rest of the Amentiferre are 

 anemophilous, and their ancestor was no doubt 

 entomophilous (the degraded perianth and other 

 morphological characters point almost irresistibly to 

 this conclusion) and through changing conditions 

 reverted to anemophily.* Salix has now branched 

 off and returned to the entomophilous condition. 

 The circumstances which enabled it to do this Muller 

 makes clear enough, and the characters it has 

 developed in relation to it are also sufficiently obvious. 

 Thus we seem bound to agree with Henslow's view. 

 He says— "The genus Plantago, like Thalictrum 

 minus, Poterium, and others, well illustrates the 

 change from an entomophilous to the anemophilous 

 state . . . P. media . . . illustrates, not a primitive ento- 

 mophilous condition, but a return to it ; just as is 

 the case with Sangirisorba officinalis and Salix caprea ; 

 but these show no capacity of restoring the corolla, 

 the attractive features having to be borne by the 

 calyx, which is purplish in Sanguisorba, by the pink 

 filaments of Plantago, and by the yellow anthers in 

 the Sallow Willow" ("Floral Structures," p. 271). 

 Since the willow has passed through the anemophilous 

 state, we have the explanation of its flowers appearing 

 before the leaves, and the other facts are explained 

 in exactly the same way as stated in Mr. Darbishire's 

 two concluding paragraphs. We merely have to 

 consider these anemophilous ancestors to have been 



* I know that the absence of perianth in Salix inclines one to 

 think it a primitive form ; but its affinities, though somewhat 

 obscure, are probably with the Cupul.fers, Betulaces, etc., 

 with which it is often classed as Amentifers. Many of these 

 have rudimentary perianths, and from the analogy of the 

 Chenopodiaceae, etc.. which are certainly descendants of ento- 

 mophilous forms like Caryophylles (Eichler classes them 

 together as Centrospermse), it is hard to resist the conclusion 

 that they are degenerate entomophilous forms. 



