186 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



an occasional cross suffices to secure the benefit of inter-crossing, 

 whatever that may be. Nothing yet appears which seriously dis- 

 turbs our conviction that just this is what nature generally provides 

 for. 



Mr. Henslow's proposition, "The majority of flowers are self-fer- 

 tile," is doubtless true in the sense that they are capable of self-ferti- 

 lization, and is not improbable in the sense that they "can and do 

 fertilize themselves habitually" But his inference that the majority 

 of flowers, or that any flowers, actually propagate for a series of gen- 

 erations by self-fecundation, or that a cross if it occur is "exception- 

 al," and of no account, is surely unwarranted by the evidence which 

 he has adduced. 



Occasionally the reported facts will not bear scrutiny. Gentiana 

 Andrervsil, it is said, never opens at all in America. It opens in sun- 

 shine in the middle of the day here in New England. And while 

 looking at closed flowers we have seen a humble bee emerge from 

 one. We have, in this Journal, shown how it is that self-fertilization 

 is impossible during the flrst thrd,e or four days of anthesis, but neat- 

 ly practicable afterwards. It is rash to inf<M" (as on p. 330) that pap- 

 ilionaceous flowers which shed their pollen earl}'- in proximity to the 

 stigma are therefore self-fertilized. In most of the cases adduced the 

 pollen is not lodged upon the stigma, but upon the style below it, 

 and the adaptations for intercrossing, though the mechanism be diff'- 

 erent, are as explicit as in th6 analogous case of Campanula. "Fre- 

 mont pathetically describes the solitary bee that rested on his shoul- 

 der at the top of Tike's Peak." The pathos is wasted as respects all 

 but this particular bee; for the entomologists find that alpine region 

 of the Rock}' Mountains to be as well stocked with flying insects as 

 are alpine regions in other parts of the world. They do not super- 

 abound, but if from the alpine flora we subtract the evident!}^ ento- 

 mophiious and the anemophilous blossoms, tlie remainder will be 

 nearly nil. And as to the correlation ol this comparative scarcity of 

 insects with the marked conspicuousness of blossoms, this is the way 

 the lesson is read by a most eminent phj^siologist : "Even the glow- 

 ing hne of alpine flowers is accounted for by the attraction Avhich 

 brighter-colored individuals exercise upon the insects, scarce in those 

 heights and necessary for fertilization." 



One or two of the author's own observations are perhaps to be re- 

 vised. '■'Gaura parvifioixi . . . has no corolla and is cleistogaraous, in 

 that it is self-fertilizing in bud, as I found in specimens grovv'ing at 

 Kew." Were the}^ not imperfectly developed blossoms, perhaps late 



