CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 



261 



the boulder, explaining to two ladies 

 the latest theory of its early formation, 

 its history, and its migration to this 

 country from some unknown land, 

 making its journey during immeasur- 

 able ages of the past, by a ride on a 

 glacier's back. 



Whereupon I asked, "Did I under- 

 stand you to say that that stone is an 

 old friend of yours?" "Yes," he said, 

 "it reminds me of some of the glacial 

 specimens of the kind which we have 

 on the campus where I live." "You are 

 a university man?" I asked. "Yes, 

 professor of geology in my southern 

 home university." "Well, Professor," 

 I said, "you are the very person for 

 whom I've been wishing, that I might, 

 if possible, glean some new or late 

 intelligence as to whence out of chaos 

 it came." And the professor, with a 

 twinkle glancing from one corner of 

 his eye. stood silent for a moment, and 

 smiled. 



I think it was Henry Ward Beecher 

 who said, "The flowers are the greatest 

 work of God's creation into which he 

 did not breathe a soul." But this glist- 

 ening granite boulder's surface upon 

 which from the sun 



The warm genial rays come smilingly 

 down, 



And gleefully dancing 

 While silently trancing 

 O'er sparkling felspar, from grey to the 



brown ;" 

 is to me as Beecher's flowers were to 

 him, one of the sweetmeats for mental 

 feasts when the mind is relaxed from 

 the prosaics of life's necessities, and 

 I ask. Whence out of Chaos came it? 



Reverend James McCash, LL. D., 

 Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 

 the Queen's University of Ireland, in 

 his admirable work entitled "Typical 

 Forms, and Their Special Ends in Cre- 

 ation," has beautifully traced man's 

 composition through the kingdom of 

 the plant creation, and how the plant 

 kingdom has risen from the mineral 

 and solid rocks. This hypothesis 

 granted, I ofttimes wonder if the 

 brightly illuminated soul of man which 

 we sometimes see shining out from a- 

 long his life's walks, may really have 

 had its origin fostered by these beauti- 

 ful floral granites with their shining 

 and mirrored felspar from the mineral 

 kingdom, and granting that this could 



possibly be so, I yet reverently ask, 

 AYhence out of Chaos came it? 



(Dr.)W. R. Kxowi.ks. 



Sympodial Growth. 



BY CHARLES C. PUTT, BALTIMORE, MARY- 

 LAND. 



Just why sympodial growth should 

 not have been given more attention by 

 botanists, perhaps never will be satis- 

 factorily explained. One would think, 

 that, as an easy means for additional ob- 

 servation work, would alone have en- 

 titled it to a little more consideration 

 than it generally receives in most of 

 our botanical text-books. Even the 

 terms sympodial and monopodial, when 

 this subject is discussed at all, are quite 

 frequently not used at all, and the dis- 

 cussion takes place under the caption, 

 "Definite and Indefinite Annual Growth." 

 Sometimes one might almost get the 

 impression that these terms were no 

 longer good and acceptable botanical 

 ones. 



For the benefit of those readers of The 

 Glide to Nature, who perhans never 

 have given this subject any considera- 

 tion, the following is presented. It 

 is not at all exhaustive, nor does it go 

 into all phases of the subject. * To 

 do this, would take up much more 

 time than the subject warrants. It is 

 possible, as will be shown later, that 

 some little importance may be attached 

 to this matter, in the study of our trees 

 and shrubs (towards their determina- 

 tion) during the winter; aside from 

 this, no doubt, the greatest satisfac- 

 tion will be the deciding for one's self 

 whether a growth is monopodial or 

 sympodial, just as one is pleased to 

 study the phyllotaxy of any plant, and 

 just as it matters very little whether 

 it is of the 2-5 or the 3-8 arrangement, 

 so, too, it matters really very little 

 whether a branch is a sympode or a 

 monopode. 



We will start with Dr. Gray's defini- 

 tions of a sympodium — "a stem made 

 up of a series of superposed branches, 

 in a way to imitate a simple axis." and 

 of a monopodium — "a stem of a single 

 and continuous axis, formed by the 

 continual development of a terminal 

 bud." In other words, as long as a 

 plant retains a terminal bud, capable of 

 continuing the axis, a monopodium will 

 be the result, but a sympodium, when 



