^H BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



the blossom of unwelcome guests. And this may be extended to the 

 flies also, which might reach the blossom on the wing, but are attract- 

 ed rather to the glands beneath, to their own destruction. Those' 

 who have good opportunities of observing Mentzelia ornata, and its 

 much more common relative M. nuda, are requested to investigate 

 the matter, and ascertain whether this charge of cruel behavior is 

 well founded. — A. Gray, 



Fission of Leaves in the Peach.— Mr. Henry W. Lothrop, an ob- 

 servant naturalist of Providence, has just brought me some leaves 

 from a common peach tree (Pnmtfs Per>iica), in his garden, which 

 exhibit fission in a curious manner. On the same tree occur normal 

 lanceolate leaves, others l)roader and barely three-lobed, some which 

 are decidedly three-cleft, and some bifurcated in the manner so com- 

 mon in ferns. The last present a curious modification. What, in the 

 three-cleft form, is the terminal segment, is here, in some cases, re- 

 duced to a minute leaflet, standing at right angles to the plane of 

 the leaf. 



That the phenomenon results from fission, and not from the fusion 

 of two leaves, is shown by the position of the leaves, and by the con- 

 tinuation of the midrib in the simply lobed forms, to the normally 

 acute apex. In some of the three-cleft ones, a vein rather stronger 

 than the general pinnation runs into the lateral lobes. In the bifur- 

 cated examples, the midrib apparently divides at the sinus, giving 

 off a branch to each lobe. — W. W. Bailey. 



Supplemeiitarj/ Note. — Since I forwarded an account of this abnor- 

 mality, Mr, Lothrop, in whose garden the tree grows, has brought me 

 some still more aberrant leaves. These are of the bifurcated type, 

 with the odd leaflet borne in the sinus, but in these the leaflet is, as 

 one might say, proliferous, bearing another beyond, or as if the first 

 were constricted in the middle. The owner attributes the eccentric- 

 ity of the tree to unusual manuring — W. W. B. 



The dichogamy of Spigelia Marilandica is strongly marked, and is 

 of the type of Campanula. The anthers connive around the style, 

 the upper half of which is beset with pollen-collecting hairs, on which 

 the pollen is copiously deposited : the elongation of the style now 

 protrudes the pollen-laden portion, and the terminal stigma matures 

 a day or two later. In the second flowering here in September the 

 adjustment occasionally fails by the style elongating before the an- 

 thers discharge their pollen. — A. Gray. 



