THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 115 



It is not justice for the dead zoologist that we held so much as 

 justice to the living, and even now, the dead get no recognition 

 if they violate the rules of the game unknown in their day. 

 The ''statute of limitation" needed at the point where codes 

 break down is a responsible body of men whose rulings will be 

 respected by every scientific man who cares more for stability 

 of names than he does for his own preferences." 



Carrots and Color — Make a very thin section of the 

 common carrot root, place it under the microscope and with 

 proper magnification you will see certain angular pale orange 

 colored bodies in the cells. These are crystals of carotin and 

 it is to them that the color of the carrot root is due. This fact 

 would be of no great significance but for the fact that it is 

 this same carotin that produces the characteristic color in many 

 orange yellow fruits such as those of the mountain ash and 

 triosteum. Nature has two ways of coloring her brilliant 

 specimens. In one case she colors the cell sap, in the other 

 the color is lodged in tiny bodies called chromoplasts within 

 the cells. It is a curious fact that the color of blue and purple 

 flowers is always due to colored cell sap but red, orange and 

 yellow fruits and flowers usually bear their colors in chromo- 

 plasts. 



Nectar Statistics. — Wc sometimes get new light on an 

 old subject in the most indirect way. For instance the chance 

 for insect pollination among the flowers is shown to be very 

 good when we consider the annual output of honey. It has 

 been estimated by careful observers that a bee carries about 

 three tenths of a grain on each trip to the hive and therefore a 

 pound of honey — or rather nectar, since the nectar has to be 

 evaporated to make honey — a pound of honey would require 

 more than twenty thousand trips of the bee. It is not to be 

 wondered at, in the light of these facts that the life of the 

 average worker bee is said to last not longer than six weeks. 



