SPIDER-FLOWERS. 209 



centimeters long. I have been interested in watching the open- 

 ing of these curious flowers, and especially the emergence of the 

 long stamens. When the flower bud is about full grown the claws 

 of the tightly wrapped petals elongate, and at the same time the 

 filaments, also, elongate and crowd the anthers against the closed 

 top of the corolla. The result is that the cluster of stamens soon 

 begins to bow out between the petal claws, while tlie pressure 

 causes the petals to bend over to the opposite side, giving the 

 flower its ''lop-sided" appearance. For some reason, not made 

 out, the stamens push out from the lower side of the flower bud, 

 so that when open the four petals are above and the six spread- 

 ing stamens are below. Incidentally it may be recorded here 

 that the stamens in this species are not equidistant upon the 

 receptacle, but when one looks do^\ai into the open flower he finds 

 three closely inserted filaments on each side, with a distinctly 

 greater interval between the stamens above and below. 



CHAKLES E. BESSEY. 

 The Universitv of Nebraska. 



^"EW SOIL STUDIES. 



It is a curious fact that, while the relation of the plant to 

 the soil in which it grows is one of the most important among 

 the environmental relations of the organism, yet plant physiolo- 

 gists and ecologists have so far paid almost no attention to the 

 details of the nature and behavior of the soil solution. This is 

 perhaps due to the extreme difficulty of the problems involved, 

 but they are seemingly no more difficult than the problems of 

 absorption, photosynthesis, etc., with which botanists have suc- 

 cessfully grappled. The work so far accomplished has been done 

 almost entirely by students of agriculture who are not primarily 

 interested in the science of botany but in its applications. 



For some years the members of the laboratory staff of the 

 Bureau of Soils of the IT. S. Department of Agriculture have 

 been following this line of inquiry in a truly research spirit, and 



