1892.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 371 



plant in any direction whatever, while the female plant has to 

 depend on the wind for its fertilizing material. 



The sap between the bark and the wood, both in this and in other 

 species of liJtii-^, is very sweet and particularly abundant, and on the 

 slightest scratch, courses down the branches ; in gathering it 

 insects almost fight each other. The little exuding through the 

 glands seems the result of an effort to get rid of a superabundance, 

 and without any special significance in the economy of the plant. 



RUBUS CHAM^MORUS. 



Authors have variously characterized this plant. Thus, Don 

 (1832) notes it as dicecious, Beck (1833) monoecious, while Michaux 

 (1803) and Torrey (1826) leave the inference that it is hermaphro- 

 dite. Lightfoot, in "Flora Scotica" (1787), says, "This plant is 

 dioecious above ground, but, according to a curious observation 

 made by Dr. Solander, the roots of the male and the female unite 

 together under the earth so as to render the plant truly monoecious." 

 Dr. Gray (1867) regards the plant as dicecious. It did not mat- 

 ter so much, in the past generation, about special accuracy in these 

 particulars, but in more recent times, when these questions enter 

 largely into botanical philosophy, more accurate diagnoses are 

 desirable. Specimens brought to me by botanical friends at Seal 

 Harbor, Maine, show the plant to run extensively by underground 

 stolons; one flowering branch with dried flowers producing no fruit, 

 and another with berries from the same stolon, indicated that 

 Solander was right in giving it a monoecious character without, 

 however, the necessity of calling in underground grafting to 

 account for the phenomena. The male "canes" appear to have 

 been longer than the fruit-bearing ones. Dr. Gray, in the sixth 

 edition of the " Manual," makes a subsection in which this species 

 is placed, the flowers having a 5-lobed calyx. In all the specimens 

 brought me each had but four lobes. Residents of Mt. Desert Island 

 call the fruit " baked apple berries." 



Dalibarda repens. 



No author gives the slightest hint of any irregularities in the 

 flowers of Dalibarda repens, though its relative on the one side, 

 Rubns, has a monoecious representative in R. chamceniorus, and on the 

 other side in Fragaria chilensis, and often in F. virginiana. 



Confined to my room, at Seal Harbor, Maine, in August of the 

 present year, by temporary illness, good botanical friends, and espe- 



