252 Transactions of the [Sess, 



To treat now shortly of the 'perennial forms. There are, first, L. 

 album, the white Dead-nettle. This species seldom varies in habit 

 or general appearance, thus forming a marked contrast to its purple 

 relative, which sports, as above remarked, into several varieties. 

 Both the white and the purple forms may be found in flower nearly 

 the whole year round, and it becomes an interesting question how 

 these insect-fertilised plants, with such as Grorse, Butcher' s-Broom, 

 Daisy, and Dandelion, when flowering in winter, can be fertilised 

 at a season when the number of insects about is small indeed. 

 The difficulty is found to be met by self-fertilisation in this case, 

 the anthers discharging their pollen in the hud before the flower is 

 opened, as in the so-called " cleistogenous " flowers. A plant of L. 

 album, gathered in bud in the last week of December, showed the 

 stamens " completely curved down and brought into contact with 

 the bifid stigma — the pollen being at that time freely discharged 

 from the anthers." This mode of fertilisation in winter-flowering 

 plants which are normally insect-fertilised, is one worth testing 

 in order to place it on a still broader basis of fact. In the two 

 last editions of Hooker's ' Student's Flora,' L. album is stated to 

 be " rare and local in Scotland and Ireland." In all the localities 

 in the east of Scotland which I have visited, I have found this 

 plant always abundant, though by the botanists of the West of 

 Scotland it is reckoned a rare plant. I have been favoured, on 

 this point, with the following remarks from Mr E. Turner, a 

 Vice-President of the Natural History Society of Glasgow : " As to 

 the Dead-nettle [Lcmiiimi albuin)^ the plant is not at all common 

 in the Glasgow district. Our former local authorities — Hopkirk, 

 Patrick, and Hennedy — state in their Floras that it is frequent ; 

 but my own impression is, that ' rare and local ' is a much better 

 term. I have hardly ever seen it in any of the localities mentioned 

 by Hennedy, and where it does occur it exists in no great abun- 

 dance. I do not recollect seeing it anywhere about the Firth of 

 Clyde, or indeed along the West Coast at all. To the north of the 

 Firth of Clyde it is almost unknown, and it is certainly far from 

 common in the counties of Wigtown, Dumfries, and Kirkcudbright. 

 Even so far south as Lancashire, it is, I believe, scarce. I have 

 observed it in a few stations in the interior of the counties of 

 Lanark and Eenfrew ; but it does not in the least approach, even 

 in the places where it occurs, the profusion which it attains in 

 some eastern counties, as in Koxburghshire for instance, about 

 Kelso, where it makes every hedge-bank and waste place beautiful 

 in early summer. I observed a year or two ago, in our Eoyal 

 Botanic Gardens here, a label resting lonely on a plot for botanic 

 students bearing the words ' Lamium alburn,^ and not a single 

 plant anywhere. It does not seem to take kindly with our soil 

 or climate, and is a rarity compared with L. intermedium, Fries, 



