1884.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 15 



gardens, credited to the florists' skill, were wildlings which had 

 been taken into cultivation. 



Mr. Meehan also remarked that Euonymus radicans, under 

 culture from Japan, is believed by some modern botanists to be 

 but a variety of £. Japonicus. He exhibited branches of the 

 latter which had been produced b}^ the former. They were not 

 varieties, but simply frutescent and radicant forms of each other. 



The speaker exhibited specimens of Opuntia frutescens, var. 

 longinpina, in which fruit had formed, though no flowers had 

 appeared, the scarcely developed sepals and petals having been 

 thrown off the apex in infanc}' . A regular gradation from perfect 

 branches to these fruits was exhibited, some of those most 

 closely related to perfectl}^ formed fruit having a tendency to the 

 red coloring which marked the fruits. Occasion was taken to 

 emphasize the morphological doctrine, that fruits like apples 

 and pears are but arrested branches. 



In continuation, Mr. Meehan reintroduced specimens exhibited 

 at a former meeting, showing that the roots of a supposed 

 Jerusalem artichoke, wild near Philadelphia, and supposed 

 to have been in some past time an escape from gardens, had 

 characteristics somewhat different from the form now under 

 culture in the vicinity, and inquired whether this might be what 

 has been hitherto known as Helianthus doronocoides^ which Dr. 

 Gray had demonstrated some years ago in Silliman's Journal, to 

 be the parent of H. tnberosns. If so, it might prove that this 

 species was indigenous to Eastern Pennsylvania. 



Dr. Asa Gray did not think the species was indigenous here. 

 He rather suspected that the form now^ wild had once been the 

 cultivated one, and that the ones now in use had been introduced 

 since. He remarked that he had been working among the roots 

 of different species of the genus, during the past autumn, some 

 of which he found had merely fleshy roots, like those of Dahlia^ 

 making no runners; others had runners developed into true tubers. 



Mr. Meehan also exhibited some nuts of Carya glabra Torr. 

 (C. porcina Nutt.) which had been brought in by one of his 

 seed collectors from a tree in the woods in the vicinity of 

 Philadelphia. They had two or sometimes three nuts in a single 

 exoc.-np, as in the manner of Castanea vesca, the common 

 chestnut. The collector was under the impression that all the 

 nuts borne by the tree were of a similar character. 



Dr. Asa Gray remarked that this occurrence of two or three 

 nuts of Carya within the same husk, either separate or partly 

 coherent, was of much morphological significance. Specimens 

 like these had been sent to him several years ago, said to have 

 been collected in Montgomery Co., Penna., with the remark that 

 the tree bore a good "many such abnormal fruits ; Dr. Gray 

 believed that the conclusion to which they inevitably pointed had 



