258 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Auditing Committee. 

 Thomas T. Bouve, Charles E. Ware. 



Professors Treadwell and Lovering and Mr, J. P. Hall 

 were appointed a committee to consider the subject of the 

 meteorological observations of the Academy. 



Professor Gray made a brief communication on the placen- 

 tation of certain Ge7itianaceoi, and the variable sestivation of 

 the corolla in certain ScroplmlariacecB. His former pupil, Mr. 

 Henry James Clark, of Cambridge, had recently shown him 

 that in most of our North American Gentians the ovules are 

 spread over the whole parietes of the ovary, either irregularly 

 or in vertical lines on the veins ; and on examination, the 

 same thing was found to occur in Bartonia, Muhl. [Centaii- 

 rella^ Michx.) even more strikingly, the innumerable small 

 ovules being thickly crowded over the whole inner surface 

 of the ovary, just as in Oholaria ; and even the somewhat 

 cruciform shape of the transverse section of th^ ovary of Oho- 

 laria is repeated in Bartonia paniciilata. These observa- 

 tions may be considered as decisive of the question of the true 

 position, in the natural system, of Oholaria, so long viewed 

 as anomalous ; its affinities to the GentianacecB, long ago 

 suggested by Nuttall, and advocated by Professor Gray in the 

 third volume of the Memoirs of the Academy, being now per- 

 fectly confirmed. For this very placentation, which was nat- 

 urally thought to indicate a relationship rather with the Oro- 

 hanchacece (in which, however, this particular arrangement 

 does not occur), now proves to be a confirmation of its affinity 

 with the Gentianacece. 



The only remaining obstacle to this view is the imbricated 

 sestivation of the corolla of Oholaria ; a character which Pro- 

 fessor Gray could not consider of very great consequence, 

 since a different deviation from the usual convolute eestivation 

 is well known to occur in one tribe of the Gentian Family 

 (the Menijanthece). And as an instance of the occasional 

 breaking down of this character, even in cases where it is 

 generally stable and systematically important, he referred to 



