BIOLOGY. 335 



Bastian show that eggs thus transposed from male cells to thoso 

 of workers, and vice versa, are invariably expelled by the bees ; 

 that the sex is actually preformed in the egg when deposited ; and 

 that the manner in which the larva is nourished and the dimensions 

 of the cells have nothing to do with the production of males or 

 workers. — Comptes Rendus, Jiilyy 1868. 



New Arctic Conifer. — In the " Journal of Botany," Mr. A. Mur- 

 ray describes the most northerly tree on the north-west coast of 

 America. It was found forming forests on the banks of the rivers 

 Noatak and Buckland, on the American side of Behring's Straits, 

 nearly 7 degrees farther north than the limits of the woods on the 

 eastern side of the American continent. Originally described by 

 Dr. Seeman as a variety of Abies alba, Mr. Murray, from certain 

 differences in the bract of the scale, regards it as a new species, 

 and names it A. arctica. The desolate country where this tree is 

 found is thus described by Dr. Seeman : " There is nothing to re- 

 lieve the monotony of the steppes. A few stunted coniferous and 

 willow trees afford little variety, and even these, on passing the 

 boundary of the frigid zone, are either transformed into dwarf 

 bushes or disappear altogether. About Norton Sound groves of 

 white spruce trees and Salix speciosa are frequent ; northwards 

 they become less abundant, till in lat. 66° 4,^' N., on the banks of 

 the Noatak, Pinus alba disappears." 



Fertilization of Plants. — According to Darwin, all plants with 

 conspicuously colored flowers, or powerful odors, or honeyed se- 

 cretions, are fertilized by insects ; all with inconspicuous flowers, 

 and especially such as have pendulous anthers, or incoherent 

 pollen, are fertilized by the wind. Whence he infers that, before 

 honey-feeding insects existed, the vegetation of our globe could 

 not have been ornamented with bright-colored flowers, but con- 

 sisted of such plants as pines, oaks, grasses, nettles, etc. 



Tubular Vessels of Plants. — Physiologists are not agreed as to 

 the functions of these vessels, which permeate vegetable tissue 

 from the tip of the roots to the petals and pistils. Some aflirm 

 that they contain air, others fluids, others gases, etc. Herbert 

 Spencer has shown that these vessels are not only charged at cer- 

 tain seasons of the year with fluid, but that they are intimately 

 connected with the formation of wood ; and from experiments 

 with colored fluids capable of entering the tissues without impair- 

 ing vitality, not only in cuttings of plants, but in individuals in 

 which the roots were uninjured, that the sap not only ascends by 

 the vascular tissue, but that the same tissue acts in its turn as ab- 

 sorbents, returning and distributing the sap which has been modi- 

 fied in the leaves. That this tissue acts some important part is 

 clear from the constancy with which it is produced at a very early 

 stage in adventitious buds, establishing a connection between the 

 tissue of the old and new parts. 



