1877.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



55 



he knows, stood alone in pointing out that many 

 of the supposed facts were erroneous, and that 

 the interpretation of the others was doubtful. 



In the January number of the American Agri- 

 culturist, Prof Asa Gray has another paper on 

 this topic, from which we take the following : — 

 " Cross fertilization we may well believe, is the 

 best thing, but it is risky. Cross fertilization, 

 tempered with self fertilization — which is the 

 commoner case — is practically the best under 

 ordinary cases ; is the compromise between the 

 two risks, via. : failure of vigorous and fertile 

 posterity on one hand, and failure of immediate 

 offspring on the other. Get fertilized, cross-fer- 

 tilized if you can, close fertilized if you must — is 

 nature's golden rule for flowers." We see that 

 Dr. Gray no longer believes that nature "shuns 

 the practice of self-fertilization," but practices it 

 (and practices it extensively), when cross- 

 fertilization fails. 



Evolution in Plants. — Evolution, in some 

 form, is generally accepted by scientific men. 

 Dr. Hubert Airy, in Proc. Koyal Society for 

 January, 1873, believes that in phyllotaxis, or the 

 leaf arrangement of plants, the one-two ar- 

 rangement (the second leaf being opposite to the 

 first), is the earliestin point of time, and thatall the 

 other forms are subsequent to this. Roots, he 

 Bays are always two ranked, and monocoty- 

 ledons have the first leaves one-two. In dicoty- 

 ledons the first leaves have the simplest order of 

 the whorled type. 



Vegetation of Bermuda. — Five hundred spe- 

 cies of plants have been found on the island. 

 The Burmuda Red Cedar is the principal tree. 

 The seeds are supposed to have been originally 

 brought from America by the Cedar Wax-wing, 

 % a bird which makes the trip in twenty-four 

 hours. The island is twenty-five miles long, and 

 six hundred miles from Cape Hattaras. There 

 is no brook or stream on the island, and no part 

 is over two hundred and fifty feet above the level 

 of the sea. The temperature is about 75° from 

 May to November. Ihe cool season is in Febru- 

 ary and March, when the temperature is about 

 50°, when the flowers are mostly found. There 

 are no clouds, no rain, from July to September, 

 and all is parched and bare. Part of the island 

 has subsided far below the level of the sea. 

 The trunks of old cedars are found in the marsh 

 lands. It is during the cool season that the fine 

 Potatoes are raised that find their way to Phila- 

 delphia markets in April. 



Our Native Lilies. — In another place we 

 give a note from a correspondent from Califor- 

 nia in regard to the varieties of the Lilies in that 

 section. Our own eastern kinds vary also, and 

 the varieties are well worth looking after. We 

 have not had the chance of observing how much 



the Lilium Philadelphicum, or L. Catesbaei 

 vary, but L. superbum and L. Canadense have 

 numbers of beautiful forms. We give an illug- 

 tration of the Canadian Lily. 



Fertilization in Beans. — At the October 3d 

 meeting of the Philadelphia Academy of Natu- 

 ral Sciences last Summer, Mr. Meehan observed 

 that in all the discussions on the injurious effects 

 of close breeding in flowers, and the consequent 

 theories of cross-fertilization, nearly all the ar- 

 guments were drawn from structure. We are 

 asked to note certain arrangements, and then to 

 believe that certain results must follow. He 

 preferred to watch the plants in their actions, 

 and in the result of their actions, when excluded 

 from external agencies, believingitthemore prac- 

 tical way preferable to the theoretical one. One 

 of his friends who thought he was wrong in lim- 

 iting insect agency to a few plants, and in ques- 

 tioning the injury from vegetable close breeding, 

 had been giving for some months past a series 

 of articles in proof of his side— the more uni- 

 versal view. Of course the position of his friend 

 was entitled to all the benefit to he derived from 

 structural arrangement, but when he referred to 

 actual behavior in plants, it came within the 

 province he had marked out for himself. In the 

 last paper there was an instance of this kind. 

 After noting how the flowers of Phaseolus— the 

 common bean— were formed, and the supposed 

 impossibility of fertilization by its own pollen, 

 the paragraph concludes as follows: — "The 

 machinery tells its own story plainly. The con- 



