BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



299 



been prevented. Such a work shows a very wise and far-sighted policy, and 

 undertaken, as it has been, in the true scientific spirit, it has satisfied not only 

 those immediately benefited, but entomologists as well. It is the densest stu- 

 pidity which refuses the expenditure of hundreds to save thousands, or which 

 looks for immediate practical results from the first appropriation. " Learn to 

 labor and to wait" is not a part of the average legislator's policy, to whose 

 mind results must be immediate or they are nothing. Now in the midst of all 

 this good work that is being done by the department, and that has been so 

 wisely provided for, why is it not seen that another great work is waiting to be 

 done, a work that can not be entered upon too quickly? Noxious insects are 

 not the only destroyers of crops, but hosts of injurious parasitic plants are 

 spreading everywhere. We venture to say that loss from this source is as great 

 as from insects. The habits of these injurious parasites have not been studied 

 much in this country, but there are competent men who are working at them 

 in a private way, but this is slow business when the country is in need. The 

 rusts and smuts, and molds and rots, all need studying, and there could be no 

 wiser appropriation of public money than to organize a commission for such 

 investigation on the same basis as the Entomological Commission. The De- 

 partment of Agriculture should make the move in this matter, and urge upon 

 the next Congress the necessities of the case, backed by all the scientific and 

 agricultural journals of the country. A laboratory for such investigations can 

 be fitted up with very little outlay, and with unlimited opportunity for observ- 

 ing these parasites over large areas the results would undoubtedly be most sat- 

 isfactory. There is some way of getting rid of these pests, and it can only be 

 found by a careful study of their life histories. Usually they pass through dif- 

 ferent phases upon different hosts, and these hosts may sometimes be necessary 

 to their further development. If then some host plant, which may be of no 

 economic value, is acting as a carrier of these destructive parasites to some 

 valuable crop, what incalculable importance it would be to know it! This is 

 but the vaguest kind of intimation as to the direction in which practical re- 

 sults might speedily be reached. A commission for the study of injurious par- 

 asitic plants should now be the ambition not only of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, but of every botanist and agriculturist in the country. — J. M. C. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Professor Coulter gave an account of the development of the dandelion 

 flower before the A. A. A. S. at Minneapolis. His conclusions were: I. The 

 inferior ovary is produced by an arrest in the development of the Moral axis, 

 the rising in a peripheral ring of the floral organs, and the gradual arching 

 over of the cavity thus produced by the carpellary leaves; II. The syngene- 

 sious anthers are united by contact and pressure, but in no sense structurally : 

 III. The ovule is not produced directly from the axis, but is an outgrowth from 

 the surface (probably the mid rib) of a carpellary leaf. The paper opened up a 

 number of incidental questions of much interest. It will appear shortly in the 

 A meru-an Naturalist. 



