BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



*93 



the pollen or some secretion of the flower is intoxicating and so the in- 

 sects drop over the edge of the broad stigma into the open leaf cups 

 helow. The theory is supported by analogy and the position of the parts 

 rather than by any direct observation. 



M. J. Vesqtje has succeeded in devising a method by which the 

 movements of water in plants can be directly observed. In applying 

 this method in testing the theories that are held with regard to the ex- 

 act route of the ascending water, it appears that the true view is a "gold- 

 en mean." Under certain conditions the water is transferred by means 

 of the cavities themselves, but they may also serve as reservoirs. 



R. Zeiller has found the stomata on [a fossil Cretaceous conifer 

 quite well preserved. Curiously, the cells guarding each stoma are 

 four and occasionally five in number arranged radiately, thus leaving 

 instead of a simple slit a star shaped opening with four or five rays. 

 The stomata are arranged in rows and the orifice is situated at the bot- 

 tom of a slight depression which is surrounded as in living allies by a 

 slightly projecting edge of cuticle. 



Mr. Francis Wolle, of Bethlehem, Penn., in a recent letter, refers 

 to the article in the January number of the American Naturalist on the 

 method to be used in interpreting the microscopic portion of the descrip- 

 tions of Schweinitz, and confirms the conclusions there given. He was 

 in youth acquainted with Schweinitz, and sent him specimens. His mi- 

 croscope was of German make, and in its day was considered a very 

 good one, but would not now be serviceable. 



Mr. Grant Allen's theory that petals are transformed stamens 

 rather than leaves, and that hence the earliest and simplest existing pe- 

 tals would be yellow, cannot carry conviction without answering some 

 very serious objections. How the line can be drawn between petals and 

 sepals it is hard to say, and from colored sepals to colored bracts is not a 

 great distance and the relation between leaf and petal seems still a very 

 close one. That yellow is the prevailing color in the Comjmsitw and 

 very common in Leguminosae and Orchidacece, which are very far from 

 being the '"simplest types," is also hard to explain if we accept the state- 

 ment that the earliest and simplest existing petals would be yellow, and 

 that the colors would change with increased complexity. 



Dr. J. G. Baker is publishing in the Journal of Botany a Synopsis 

 of the genus Selagiiiella. It seems that, ferns excluded, half the known 

 vascular Cryptogams belong to this genus. Its headquarters are in Trop- 

 ical America, only two species extending into Europe, and those of the 

 Cape, Temperate Australia, etc., being by no means numerous. The 

 leaf -organs furnish characters for an easy division into four subgenera, 

 depending upon "their arrangement upon either a distichous or multi- 

 farious plan and their uniformity in shape and character or dimorphism." 

 The names given to these subgenera are Selaginella proper, tStachygyn- 

 andrum, Homosbachys, and Heterostachys, and under them are grouped 

 312 species. 



Prof. J.G. Lkmmon claims to have discovered that the potato is indi- 

 genous to Arizona. In the Huachuca Mountains last season, in July, he 

 discovered a species of Solatium in full bloom, with both the white and 



