NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 139 



of which seem to feed on the pollen. The honey bee was a fre- 

 quent visitor. None seemed to he attracted to the female flowers. 

 In the division into separate sexes the plant had gained nothing 

 in the waj* of aid by insect fertilization. Fertilization seemed 

 wholl}- accomplished by the wind. The male flowers are produced 

 in much greater abundance than the female ones. 



Mr. M. added that this discovery had a more than usual practi- 

 cal importance. Many attempts had been made to improve the 

 asparagus, as garden vegetables and the farm cereals had been im- 

 proved ; but it had often been questioned whether these improved 

 forms would reproduce themselves from seed as other garden 

 varieties did. The tendency of thought the few past j'ears had 

 been in the direction of the belief that permanent varieties could 

 be raised, and several improved kinds had been sent out by seeds- 

 men, and were popular to a considerable extent. He said he had 

 himself inclined to this opinion; but this discoveiy of complete 

 dicecism in asparagus, whereby two distinct individual forms were 

 required to produce seed, rendered a true reproduction of one 

 original parent impossible, as the progeny must necessarily par- 

 take of both forms. 



Mr. Meehan further said he had been requested by one of the 

 members, Professor Frazer, to call the attention of the Academy 

 to an orange on the table, which had produced a second smaller 

 fruit Under the rind of the larger one. The orange externally 

 presented nothing unusual, but on being peeled the second one 

 was found of about one-fifth the size of the principal one, of a tur- 

 binate shape, and fitting into the lower larger one as into a cup. 

 This upper secondary orange had the regular colored skin with 

 its endopleura, and the whole inclosed by the regular skin of the 

 primary fruit. He explained that a fruit was formed by the sud- 

 den arrestation of growth in a branch, and what would be under 

 ordinary circumstances an elongated branch, with its several nodes 

 and axillary leaves and buds, is to form a fruit compressed and con- 

 densed, so to speak, into the organized mass we call a fruit. In 

 the orange before us, the central axis, after having had its elon- 

 gating direction arrested, made another feeble departure onward, 

 and the small orange was the result. These sudden accelerations 

 of a nearly arrested growth are, though not common, sometimes 

 seen in fruits. They have been most frequently seen in the pear. 

 Here the renewed growth of the central axis bursts through the 

 primary cuticle as seen by the manner in which it is drawn up 

 with the secondary growth. He believed he had seen an instance 

 of a pear making three series of growths in one fruit. In the 

 larch it was quite common to find a branch arrested in its de- 

 velopment to form a cone, push out again into vigorous growth 

 at the apex, after resting as it were for nearly a month, while the 

 cone was forming. These larch cones, with branches growing as 

 it were completely through them, are very often seen. Aurantia- 



