HA RD WICKE'S S CIENCE- G OS SIP. 



269 



Admitting this, it appears to me that Prof. Ansted 

 refutes himself, as the reconciliation of his two 

 measurements, demands that the shore-breaker shall 

 become nearly four times as high as the deep water 

 wave. This may be refuted by simply standing on 

 a steeply-sloping shore at such an elevation that 

 the crest of the shore-breaker shall coincide visually 

 with the horizon. If such increase of height took 

 place near to the shore it would be unmistakably visible 

 from such a standpoint. If it occurred gradually, say 

 within a mile or two from shore, it would be very 

 distinctly observable by the increased pitching of a 

 ship on approaching the shore. 



NOTES ON FASCIATION IN PYRETHRUM. 



DURING the past summer the conditions favour- 

 able to the development of fasciated growth 

 in plants have been prevalent. Wet, comparatively 

 sunless weather, is highly productive of abnormal 

 growth, and in no class of plants has such growth 

 been more common than in the genus Pyrethrum. 



The earliest species to flower is P. roseum and its 

 varieties, the flowers of which are of two classes, 

 single and the so-called double ; in the latter the disk 

 florets are large, tubular, and coloured like the ray 

 florets, the former being simply normal flowers with 

 small disk florets. 



There has been a great tendency on the part of the 

 so-called double varieties to assume abnormal forms, 

 the most common being a curious ridge-like formation 

 of the receptacle, giving the flower the appearance of 

 a celosia. In the typical varieties, the flower heads 

 were more or less mis-shapen, some very curiously 

 divided across as if they had been cut with a sharp 

 knife when they were unfolding. 



In a large collection of plants here very few 

 escaped without some slight trace of fasciation. In 

 July I looked through some thousands of plants at 

 a large hardy plant nursery, and batch after batch of 

 old-established plants, and one year old seedlings 

 showed the same condition, the more highly-developed 

 " doubles " being affected the worst. 



P. parthenium has shown the same abnormal con- 

 dition and growths, but in this species a curious leafy 

 malformation has been developed in place of the 

 flower heads ; this growth greatly resembled the 

 huge outgrowths one sometimes sees on common 

 soft herbaceous plants — an excrescence due ofttimes 

 to the development of adventitious buds, and oc- 

 casionally to arrested growth. The yellow-leaved 

 variety of this species, known in gardens as "golden 

 feather," when allowed to grow naturally, has been 

 equally prolific during the past summer in producing 

 these curious growths ; that they are due to the in- 

 fluence of fasciation is proved by the flattened and 

 twisted stem. 



P. uliginosum is a late flowering species, with tall, 



bold-growing stems, lanceolate leaves and large 

 attractive white flowers. For several years past the 

 plants in the gardens here have shown a strong 

 tendency to produce mis-shapen flowers and stems, 

 the fasciation showing in many instances low down 

 on the stem in the form of a flattened main stem ; this 

 flattened condition of the main stem has however not 

 prevented the lateral branches from flowering and 

 producing flower-buds. In this respect it differs 

 from a case noted on p. 50, vol. xxii., where the 

 flattened stem of Tropnolum tuberosum failed to pro- 

 duce perfect flowers, buds only being developed, 

 which were abortive. This autumn it is a matter 

 of difficulty to find a single plant of P. uliginosum 

 without some trace of fasciation ; all kinds of mon- 

 strosities are to be found, from the shapeless terminal 

 mass of flowers, to a perfect double flower, double 

 in the sense of having two adherent capitulums on 

 one flower stalk. 



This excess of abnormal growth in the genus 

 Pyrethrum was due to the wet season. On cultivated 

 ground the effect of so much wet is to present the 

 plants with an overdose of plant-food, rendered 

 soluble by the continuous presence of rain-water. 

 This is very noticeable in the case of P. roseum, a 

 species not so given to abnormal freaks as the last 

 noticed species. 



A plant of P. Tchichatchnvii (native of Asia, 

 Minor), growing in a very dry position under trees, 

 has shown no trace of abnormal growth. This is the 

 only species growing here that has been perfectly 

 free from the influence of fasciation. How far its 

 dry position influenced the growth is a matter .for 

 experiment another season. 



Pinner. John W. Odell. 



LIFE UNDER A STONE. 



NATURAL history is a subject on which, in all 

 its various branches, many books have been 

 written. Nature, it has often been said, is itself a 

 book ; not indeed one that he who runs may read,, 

 but a magic volume to those who study it with care. 

 Some pages there are which seem at first sight blank, 

 but these are written in invisible ink, and need only 

 the fire of enthusiasm and the light of understanding 

 to bring out clear and well-defined the message that 

 they bear. Other leaves are inscribed in characters 

 so strange and mystic, that many a sage has studied 

 them in vain, 'until, as time rolls on, there is found at 

 last one wiser than the others, who translates the 

 writing on the page aright. The book of Nature is 

 never finished ; daily the great Author adds fresh 

 chapters to the work, yet there is never a dull 

 page, and even those which at a glance may seem 

 least interesting, will always well repay a closer 

 scrutiny. 



It is with one of these apparently uninteresting 



