4 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



establishment and another — briefly, no definitely established system 

 for the general governance of these institutions ; hence tacit rivalries, 

 which sometimes develop into flagrant antagonisms. The bounds of 

 jurisdiction or the several provinces of these institutions overlap in all 

 directions, and their respective interests clash." 



Everyone acquainted with the Natural History Departments of 

 the British Museum and the allied public institutions of more recent 

 foundation, will recognise how appropriately these remarks apply to 

 them. The originally economic aims of Kew Gardens, for example, have 

 expanded to such an extent that the Herbarium is in constant rivalry 

 with that of the British Museum, separating collections which ought 

 to be united, and duplicating collections in other instances. The 

 Museum of Practical Geology, also, continually acquires fossils which 

 are of little or no value for stratigraphical or economic purposes, and 

 which, from their unique interest in an anatomical sense, ought to be 

 placed with the purely scientific collections in Cromwell Road. 

 When the Art Museums are re-organised, by all means let the 

 Science Museums be similarly controlled, and the reformation will be 

 not merely economical, but conducive to efficiency. 



The Botanist in Winter. 



Though so many of our native plants lie dormant in the winter, 

 the time is not lost even for them. We perhaps go into the lanes or 

 fields and see only withered stalks, or ripe fruit waiting to be picked 

 or shaken off. We say to ourselves that the year is finished, and 

 nothing more is to be done till life revives with the first warm days 

 of spring. This idea, however, is quite mistaken, for the botanist 

 who has the good fortune to be in the field in winter sees things that are 

 quite unknown to the summer rambler. He soon learns that though 

 life may be dormant, or even extinct, in the dead stalks, yet they are 

 not therefore merely cumbering the ground and waiting for decay. 

 In many of our native plants the adaptation of the means to the end 

 does not cease with life, and the dying or dead stem is often modified 

 to help to protect or disperse the seeds. 



Winter botany has been little studied, but there is much to be 

 learnt. For instance, the dead, unsightly umbellifers, so common in 

 every hedge, are still playing their part. Instead of the green, flexible 

 stem found in the summer, we see a stiff, elastic stalk, with thin 

 whip-like tips, from which the fruit, separating from the axis, dangle 

 by one corner. Anyone who has seen boys throw pellets of clay by 

 means of a switch, and has afterwards forced his way through dead 

 umbelliferous stems, like those of the Wild Chervil, will at once 

 realise the great use of the elastic stalk, the whip-like tip, and the 

 divided carpophore with its dangling fruit. Each passing animal 

 and every breeze bends the stalk, which, springing back, tends to 

 fling the fruit well beyond the limit of the ground exhausted by the 



