92 NOTES AND COMMENTS [august 



Colours of Northern Monocotyledons. 



Mr. John H. Lovell has arranged, according to their colours, the 

 1058 species of northern monocotyledonous flowers recognised in 

 the " Illustrated Flora " of Britton and Brown, and finds there are 

 41 yellow, 82 white, 22 red, 22 purple, 34 blue, and 857 green 

 or dull, the last set being of course enormously swollen because 

 of the large number of grasses, sedges, and the like. It is useful to 

 have the facts of colour-distribution clearly before us, and when 

 we have this it is almost impossible to refrain from drawing infer- 

 ences, which may or may not be correct. Those which Mr. Lovell 

 has drawn (Amer. Naturalist, xxxiii. 1899, pp. 493-504) are the 

 following : — 



The primitive colour of the perianth of the monocotyledonous 

 families was green, as it still is in the greater part of the species 

 which are anemophilous or self-fertilised. A few of the oldest 

 families, with an indefinite number of stamens and carpels spirally 

 arranged, have probably never possessed floral envelopes. 



Yellow, white, and lurid or greenish-purple flowers, have in 

 numerous instances been derived directly from the primitive green ; 

 red flowers have passed through a yellow or white stage ; and 

 blue and purple-blue have been derived from yellow, white, or 

 red" forms. Ee version to white is most common, but reversion to red 

 or yellow also occurs. 



Physiological conditions appear to have often played an important 

 part in determining the coloration of the petals, while " insects 

 have contributed to the fixation of such characters when once 

 acquired." 



In general, among monocotyledons yellow flowers are visited 

 by bees and flies ; white flowers by bees, nocturnal lepidoptera, flies, 

 and beetles ; lurid-purple by flesh flies ; red by bees and butterflies ; 

 and blue chiefly by bees. Bed and blue flowers usually have the 

 honey concealed, which is a far more effective cause of the limitation 

 of insect visits than colour. When the honey is abundant and 

 exposed, and the flower pleasantly odorous, it may prove attractive to 

 any anthophilous insect. 



The Proper and Improper View of Heredity. 



We are not aware of the specific diagnosis of the journal called The 

 New Age, edited by S. C. Mukhopadhaya, M.A., and published in 

 Calcutta, but we know that it has a larger circulation (guaranteed) 

 than Natural Science, and we see very prominently on its title-page an 

 advertisement of a firm of plumbers and gasfitters, to which, indeed — 

 unless to its position above the title — we have no objection, for the 



