1886.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, 59 



March 2. 

 The President, Dr. Leidy, in the chair. 

 Twenty-four persons present. 



March 9. 



Mr. Edw. Potts in the chair. 



Seventeen persons present. 



The deaths of Jesse W. Starr, and of Ward B. Haseltine, 

 members, were announced. 



Botanical Notes : Secretion of Nectar in Lihonia. At the 

 meeting of the Botanical Section, on the 8th instant, Mr. Thomas 

 Meehan remarked that the Brazilian Acanthaceous plant, Lihonia, 

 secreted an enormous amount of nectar at the base of the flowers. 

 As the corollas faded, and dropped from the receptacle, the nectar 

 would be drawn over the still fresh pistil, and leave it with a 

 succession of small globules, the whole shining like a necklace of 

 diamonds in the sun. In a state of nature, honey-collecting insects 

 would doubtless not permit it to accumulate to this extent. 



Production of Nectar in Ornithogalum coarctatum. This pretty 

 species is distinguished by the development of broad sheathing 

 stipular appendages at the base of the inner series of three stamens, 

 stipular appendages as, following Mr. Worthington G. Smith, 

 in a paper contributed to the Horticultural Congress in London 

 in 1865, we must feel bound to term them. These appendages 

 were closely appressed against the ovarium. Noticing little 

 brownish globules projecting above the edges of these appendages 

 he was led to examine, and found that nectar was secreted only at 

 the base of the stipulate stamens. It was produced in such quan- 

 tity as to press upwards and above the edges, as already noted. 

 It was of thick consistence, and with the exact odor of honey. 

 Above or near the apex of the ovarium at 'the base of the short 

 style nectar exuded in limited quantity, and this suggested an 

 analogy between the morphology of the carpellary leaves and the 

 stipular filaments. 



Mr. Meehan further remarked on the production of stipular 

 appendages by the petals of flowers as accounted for by Mr. 

 Worthington Smith. In one of his earliest contributions to the 

 Proceedings of the Academy he had shown that in Magnolia the 

 petals were formed by the suppression of the laminal portions 

 and the development of the stipules. The petals were indeed 



