NEWS NOTKS AND CURRENT COMMENT. 11 



and produces seeds unmolested, while the nutritious grasses and 

 other plants are kept down by grazing. 



The plant was identified as Molucca Balm Molnccelln Icpvis L., 

 an annual of the mint family. It is sometimes cultivated as a 

 curious plant in flower gardens and is called Shell Flower and Shell 

 Balm because its peculiar green flowers bear some resemblance to 

 shells. The plant is glabrous throughout, one to two feet high, with 

 rather stout branching stems. The leaves are roundish in outline 

 with crenate margins. The flowers form the most striking charac- 

 ter. They are green, with prominent reticulated veins, bell-shaped, 

 about I4- inches long, and appear very much like green morning- 

 glory flowers. These large green corollas are persistent, finally 

 turning whitish or straw color. As is the case in other plants of 

 the mint family, each flower produces only four seeds, but the 

 flowers are numerous, and a large proportion of them seem to have 

 their full quota of well-developed seeds. These are somewhat 

 smaller than wheat grains, but large enough and heavy enough to 

 form a dangerous impurity in wheat that is not carefully screened. 

 Tiie persistent corolla aids in their distribution by the wind. 



The plant is native in western Asia, where it is a weed of road- 

 sides and fields. Specimens have also been received from eastern 

 Oregon and from Oracle, on the northern slope of the Santa Cata- 

 lina Mountains in Arizona. Reports of new localities are desired. 



Lyster H. Dewey. 



Washington, D. C. 



NEWS NOTES AND CURRENT COMMENT. 



In his presidential address before the Science Association of the 

 University of California in May, 1898, Prof W. A. Setchell gave 

 a general account of thernial algse and of the conditions under which 

 they were found, particularly as observed by him in California. In 

 conclusion he suggested that the ability of the Blue Green algce to 

 endure high temperatures may have been a primitive and not an 

 acquired characteristic; that the first waters of the earth inhabited 

 by organisms were probably of high temperature; that the descend- 

 ants of those early organisms were left stranded in the natural hot 



