THE PLANT WORLD UNDER CARE. 



457 



five inches. Cleome is well worth culti- 

 vation both for its beauty or for its pecu- 

 liarities. It is as hardy as a weed, in fact 

 it becomes a pernicious nuisance when 

 one no longer wishes to have it grow. 



In Fig. i is shown a beautiful and 

 instructive series of photographs of the 

 curving stamens from the closed peri- 

 anth to complete anthesis from a 

 sub-sylindrical tube with closely op- 

 pressed sepals and not a trace of strug- 

 gling stamens, through a gradually- 

 expanding calyx, gradually but cease- 

 lessly bending stamens, until just be- 



fore the petals spread apart the contin- 

 uous pressure of the curved staminal 

 spring lias accomplished their freedom 

 and they have spread themselves wide- 

 ly asunder, even while the tips of the 

 petals are still unrolled. Jn this photo- 

 graph there are several instructive 

 features, of which not the least is the 

 gradual separation and recurving of 

 the sepals. 



Fie 2 shows the parts greatly en- 

 larged, with the appearance of the pis- 

 til, probably pulled free by the move- 

 ment's of the stamens. 



«>YAID 

 THE LENS 



THE ANCHORS AND PLATES OF SY- 

 NAPTA. 



One of the sea cucumbers known to 

 naturalists as the Synapta, is common 

 in the sand along the coast of New 

 Jersey, and of New England as far 

 north as Massachusetts Bay, whence 

 they may be dug" between tidemarks. 

 Thev move by means of strongly de- 



mwm 



ANCHOR AND PLATES OF SYNAPTA. 



veloped muscles situated beneath the 

 skin. Feet and all appendages corres- 

 ponding to feet are entirely absent. 

 While the internal anatomy is rather 

 complex and exceedingly strange and 

 interesting, to the amateur micros- 

 copist the skin is the more attractive 

 as it supplies him with two minute 

 objects, which may be said to occur 

 in "sets" since both are needed to 

 complete each group. 



These organs for a long time puzzled 

 observers, as they failed to compre- 

 hend bow they were combined, or 

 whether or not they were connected in 

 any way. They are the "anchors and 

 plates," several of which are shown in 

 the photograph, where they are ar- 

 ranged in an artistic pattern more to 

 attract the esthetic fancy, than to in- 

 struct or to gratify one's scientific 

 curiosity. 



The eight objects grouped around the 

 central disc are the so-called plates of 

 Synapta, while the external row of 

 anchor-like bodies are the so-called 

 anchors. All these bodies are from a 

 foreign species, European probably, 

 and not from the common form of our 



