244 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



By way of illustration we extract the following sentence, 

 descriptive of the work of the roots and leaves: 



"The cells of the roots, like hewers and miners, sink numerous 

 shafts in the spaces assigned to them, drive their galleries toward 

 all points of the compass, in order to break up the mineral treas- 

 ures, separate them from the incasing stone, and set the machinery 

 of service into motion; day and night with inexhaustible diligence, 

 they extract atom by atom of potash and ammonia, phosphoric and 

 nitric acid, and, without working up their ore, deliver it over 

 to the conducting vessels which transmit it by their powerful 

 system of sucking and forcing pumps to the stem and the leaves. 

 The leaves are cell-villages which perform their daily tasks in the 

 air and the light. Their principle business is to obtain coal, which 

 is the chief constituent of the vegetable body. Our atmosphere is 

 an enormous coal-mine, many miles in thickness, that can not be 

 exhausted in thousands of thousands of years. The coal, indeed, 

 is not found pure in the air, any more than the metal in the ore, 

 but is in combination with oxygen as a transparent gas, carbonic 

 acid, and a peculiar art is required to separate it. 



In the mining districts, smelting-houses are erected beside the 

 pits, where the noble metal is extracted from the impure ores. 

 The green cells of the leaves combine the art , of the miner with 

 that ot the smelter, and have the power of extracting the pure 

 carbon from the atmosphere. In order to perform this work, 

 they must be shone upon by the sun, for the sunlight alone can 

 excite in them the marvelous faculty. Having extracted the car- 

 bon, they combine it with water and with the mineral substances 

 that have been drawn from the soil, and prepare from them the 

 living matters out of which the plant itself builds up its cells, 

 and which, taken up into the bo iy of an animal, is transformed by 

 it into flesh and blood." 



Such illustrations lighten up the dry technicalities sjo often used 

 in teaching and lie at the very basis of the great power possessed 

 by some of our lecturers on botany. 



Epideildrnm COCllleatlim, L. — Some two years ago I men- 

 tioned having discovered in (Southern Florida a curious and, to me, 

 new Orchid. The plant came into flower during the summer 

 following my discovery. I at once sent it to Prof. Watson for de- 

 termination. I thought it might be new to science. In due time 

 Prof. Watson reported it to be as above and sent me a full descrip- 

 tion. He remarked, however, that I was the first one to notice its 

 occurrence in the United States, though the species is common in 

 Central America and the West Indies. Mr. Curtiss also had never 

 seen the species during his very extensive explorations in Florida. 

 The plant in question I found at Jupiter Inlet on the Atlantic 

 coast. It was clinging to the upper limbs of a large live oak and was 

 the only specimen I have seen. Further investigation will un- 

 doubtedly reveal more. — W. W. Calkins, Chicago,Ill. 



