312 ANDERSON: EXPLORATIONS IN THE ARCTIC 



Whenever two plants with widely different characteristics are 

 crossed, characters, which in either parent may be advantageous, 

 may unite to make an unfavorable combination. It has been 

 assumed that the plant which combined with Euchlaena to 

 produce maize must have been perfect-flowered. It now seems 

 reasonable to assume also that this other ancestor was ade- 

 quately protected against self-fertilization by complete proter- 

 ogyny. 



If a perfect-flowered proterogynous plant with a terminal 

 inflorescence were combined with Euchlaena, the inability to 

 withstand self-pollination might be retained, while the segre- 

 gation of the sexes to different parts of the plant would result in 

 the practical loss of the proterogyny. 



In view of these considerations, it is suggested as probable 

 that the extreme intolerance of maize to self-pollination was 

 introduced through a perfect-flowered ancestor and that in this 

 ancestor the danger of self-pollination was guarded against by 

 proterogyny. 



ZOOLOGY. — Recent zoological explorations in the western Arctic.^ 

 Rudolph Martin Anderson, Biological Division, The 

 Geological Survey, Ottawa, Canada. (Communicated by 

 M. W. Lyon, Jr.) 



The early explorers of this region — -Hearne, Ross, Franklin, 

 Dease and Simpson, CoUinson, McClure and others — were 

 usually naval officers or agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 and made very few observations on the animal life outside of 

 occasional comments on the larger game animals or the few 

 species important to the fur trade. The first really important 

 zoological work to result from these explorations was done by 

 Dr. John Richardson, who travelled in the western Arctic in 

 1821-23, 1826-27, and 1847-48, summarized in the accounts of 

 these explorations, and in the monumental "Fauna Boreali- 

 Americana." 



^ Abridged from a paper read iiefore the Biological Society of Washington, 

 April 5, 1919. 



