41 6 The Ohio Naturalist. [Vol. Ill, No. 6, 



All the bearings of the work upon our conceptions of the phe- 

 nomena of etiolation cannot be touched in a brief review. The 

 following extract from page 228 may be of interest : 



" It is to be seen, therefore, that the phenomena of etiolation 

 rest upon and consist in the behavior of plants consequent upon 

 the absence of the morphogenic influence of light. Some species 

 show an adaptation to this absence of light, or to the positive 

 influence of darkness, by which the shoots or petioles are elon- 

 gated in such a manner as to constitute an effort to escape from 

 darkness or to attain illumination." 



Someone has suggested that etiolation gives us a means whereby 

 we may determine which are the primitive elements of certain 

 plant organs. For example, with leaves, the stipules persist in 

 comparison with the leaf -blade. In such a case the completeness 

 of the etiolation will influence the results. The present memoir 

 will appeal to American botanists interested in the subject, con- 

 taining as it does important contributions to our knowledge. 



THE GENUS PEDITIA WITH ONE NEW SPECIES. 



James S. Hine. 



The genus Peditia includes some of the largest of our Tipulidae. 

 The antennae are each composed of sixteen segments. The palpi 

 each have three segments, of which the last is whiplash-like and 

 much longer than the other two taken together. The auxiliary 

 vein ends in the costa. The anterior crossvein is very oblique 

 and is in nearly the same straight line with the inner margin of 

 the discal cell and the posterior crossvein. 



When Osten Sacken published Part IV of " Monographs of 

 North American Diptera " he mentioned one species of the genus 

 from this continent, but in his " Western Diptera" he described 

 another. Therefore at the present time there are two recognized 

 species described from America, one from eastern and one from 

 western United States. In "Psyche," Volume VII, 2or, Aid- 

 rich discusses these species and figures the wing of one of them. 

 In the same volume, page 229, Osten Sacken gives some state- 

 ments from his manuscript notes, in which he gives further obser- 

 vations on his west coast species and states that in Bigot's col- 

 lection he has seen a Peditia with a very extraordinary modifica- 

 tion of the coloration of the wings, and mentions especially a 

 broad, brown border running along the posterior margin of the 

 wing from the root to the apex. 



There is before me at the present time a very fine specimen 

 which suggests the last mentioned insect, and which was taken 

 at Port Renfrew, British Columbia, July 27, 1902, by R. C. 

 Osburn, who was at that time teaching zoology at the Minnesota 



