368 THE CULTIVATIOX OF DIATOMS. 



Pheophycee. These re-establishments of form, which I have not 

 noticed to be accompanied with phenomena of conjugation, are 

 produced in the laboratory in seasons the most diverse, which 

 shows that, perhaps, the influence of seasons on the production of 

 sporangious frustules is exaggerated. 



I shall have to wait a long time before I can make public the 

 different investigations that I have thought of; in the meantime, I 

 have thought that these methods and these results, all imperfect 

 as they are, ought to be brought to the knowledge of diatomists^ 

 with the sole object of advancing the science of Diatoms in a 

 novel way : that of direct experiment. During the carrying out of 

 the work, I do not allow myself to be disturbed, either by the 

 preliminary communication of some, nor by the conclusions of 

 those persons who look upon the Diatoms as their own property, 

 and in which department they have not for long years said any- 

 thing that was not contrary to truth, or nothing to instruct that 

 was not open to question. Modest amateur, I repeat it. I confine 

 myself, in conclusion, to thanking those who have had the patience 

 to read my essay, and to hope that the hours of leisure that I have 

 devoted to the study of Diatoms have not been entirely lost. 



Growth of Willow Trees. — Garden and Forest has received 

 a photograph of a willow tree standing in Waterbury Centre, Vt., 

 the trunk of which measures twenty-four and a-half feet in circum- 

 ference, and whose symmetrical top shades an eighth of an acre of 

 ground. A person who knows the early history of this tree testi- 

 fies that in 1840 it was a tree about six inches in diameter, which 

 had grown from a walking-stick driven into the ground a few years 

 before by some children. In that year it was cut down deep into 

 the ground inihe hope of killing it, but it started a new growth, 

 and has reached its present diameter in fifty years. The rapid 

 growth of the willow in favourable localities is well known, and 

 Dr. Hoskins (from whom the photograph was received) writes of 

 another near his home, which sprang from a cane carried by a 

 returning soldier in 1866, and thrust into the soil in his door-yard. 

 It is now more than four feet in diameter, with an immense top, 

 and bids fair, at an equal age, to reach the dimensions of the one 

 spoken of. — Popular Science Monthly. 



