THE PLANT WOKLD 39 



Editorial. 



A FRIEND of the editor has been making, for some years, a collec- 

 tion of newspaper clippings on what he felicitously calls "unnatural 

 natural history," that is, items that have made the rounds of the 

 public press, giving grossly exaggerated, if not wholly incorrect, 

 accounts of various animals and plants. As the gentleman is a zoolo- 

 gist, his collection is naturally fuller regarding misstatements about ani- 

 mals, but in the same time a botanist might easily have made an equally 

 interesting collection of items on such entertaining subjects as "the 

 man-catching tree," " the wooden flower," " a lignified snake," etc., etc. 



The following apparently circumstantial account of the finding of a 

 wonderful orchid, along the Rio de la Platte, may be taken as a sample, 

 " The collector was sitting by the side of a lagoon, near a forest of dead 

 trees which had been choked to death by orchids and climbing cacti. 

 A branch of one of these trees stretched out in front of him and about 

 a foot above the water. Upon the branch were growing many orchids, 

 and among the rest there was one which the collector had never seen 

 before. The sharp lanceolate leaves grew all around the root and radi- 

 ated from it, and from the centre or axis of the plant there hung a long 

 tape-like stem, about an eighth of an inch thick and a fourth of an inch 

 wide. This stem hung down in a graceful curve, and about four inches of 

 it were under the surface of the water. On going up to examine the 

 new specimen, the discoverer touched the leaves, and was astonished 

 to see the centre stem convulsively coil itself into a spiral like the spring 

 of a watch. On close examination and dissection it was found that the 

 stem was a long, flat tube with an opening at the outer end and con- 

 nected at the inner end with the roots by a series of hair-like tubes. By 

 observation it was found that the purpose of this stem was to sup- 

 ply water to the roots. When the plant is thirsty the proboscis is grad- 

 ually uncoiled and lowered until the tip is filled with water, then it is 

 gradually coiled up again, carrying with it the water, which, as the last 

 coil is made, trickles out upon the root at the other end." 



A good deal of attention is given to ascertaining the accuracy of 

 current news items by the daily press, but when it comes to scientific 

 matters all editorial supervision appears to be removed, and anything, 

 so long as it is "interesting" or "entertaining," in other words, sensa- 

 tional, is allowed to pass. It seems beyond question that those persons 

 who derive their botanical and zoological facts from the average news- 

 paper acquire a varied lot of misinformation. In the language of one 

 of our distinguished humorists, " It is better not to know so much than 

 a whole lot that ain't so." 





