BOTANICAL CAZF.Tl E. 17 



Canor, but having only the fruit I delayed naming it till I secured the 

 flowers. — Marcus E. Jones. 



Note.— Since writing the note on Malvastriiin coccineum., further 

 correspondence leads me to believe that the large number of sheep 

 lost by Mr. Ruble was caused largely, if not wholly, by poisonous 

 water oozing out of an embankment in the midst of a large patch of 

 MalvastriiJH. I am glad to be able to add this item of evidence in 

 favor of the plant. There are, howe\er, a number of other com- 

 j)]aints about this plant yet to be settled. — M. E. J. 



ThI'; Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands, by Baron 

 Eggers. — This is No. 13 of the Bulletin of the U. S. National Museum 

 and is quite a thick pamphlet, containing 133 pages. Some 21 pages 

 are devoted to a general description of the position, geology and cli- 

 mate of the islands, with remarks upon the charatteristic ])lants. The 

 vegetation is divided into four groups, called the "littoral," the 

 "shrubby," the "sylvan," and the "region of cultivation." The author 

 comes to the conclusion "that at a former period all the West India 

 islands have been connected mutually, and perhaps with the Ameri- 

 can continent also, during which time the plants in common to all the 

 islands, as well as to the West Indies and the continent, have ex- 

 panded themselves over their present geographical areas, at least as 

 far as they are not possessed of particular faculties for emigration over 

 the sea." 



Then follows a catalogue comprising 1,013 species of phaanogamous 

 and vascular crytogamous plants, of which 881 are indigenous and 132 

 naturalized. The prop/ortion between Mono- and Dicotyledonous 

 plants indigenous and naturalized is i to 5.8 ; in the indigenous ones 

 alone i to 4.9, thus showing the plurality of the recently introduced 

 plants to have been Dicotyledonous. Five new species are described 

 one of which is a i?Zv/i-. One looks in vain for the familar heading 

 ComposiUe and hardly recognizes it under the form of Synaulhereff.. It 

 seems strange also to see all the grasses and sedges put before the 

 Liliaccce and the other kindred families, making the highly specialized 

 Orchids the last of Phanogams. The entire absence of all Ranuncu- 

 laceous plants is a noticeable feature to workers in our more northern 

 flora. 



The report is an interesting one in more ways than can be men- 

 tioned in a brief notice and is well worth a careful study. 



Moths entrapped pa' an Asclepiad Plant (Physianthus) and 

 killed by Honey Bees. — Towards the last of September, Mr. John 

 Mooney, of Providence, an observing man, brought us a stalk of 

 F/iysiaiithus albens, an Asclepiad plant originating in Buenos Ayres, 

 with the bodies of several moths {Flusia precationis) hanging dead by 

 their proboscides or maxillae. It was found that the moths had, in 

 endeavoring to reach the pollen pocket, been caught as if in a vise by 

 one of the opposing edges of the five sets of hard horny contrivances 

 covering the pollinia. A 'i(^\K days after, Mr. Everett A. Thomjison, 



