1889.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 53 



was interesting to note the tendency, so to speak, of affinity, 

 for the grains lay on the slides associated in groups, from pairs 

 and triplets and quartets up to thirty in a cluster. It was inter- 

 esting to notice that one slide indicated a fine streak in the air, 

 in the way the grains lay on the entrapping medium. Of course, 

 usually they lay scattered, and mingled with the other debris. 

 There were also tiny bits or patches of tissue, suggestive of the 

 lining membrane of some anthers. On one slide I found a 

 group of twenty-four pollens, some of which had protuberances, 

 varying from one to three on a pollen-grain. They looked like 

 Epilobiuin, but without comparative material I can not identify 

 them. As some of these grains are without the protuberance, I 

 am inclined to regard these excrescences as the protrusion of 

 the fertilizing tubules, due to the effect of contact with the 

 glycerine. These appearances are correctly given in the plate. 

 The kinds of pollen caught were very few. The ubiquitous 

 presence was the pollen of the Ragweed. In truth it was sur- 

 prising how this one pollen dominated the occupancy of the air. 



I have mentioned the presence of vegetable hairs, so extremely 

 minute as to be invisible to the unaided sight. In the home- 

 specimens these were cylindrical and jointed, not unlike the 

 Bamboo, but they tapered at each end to a point of exquisite 

 fineness. I think a few of these in the respiratory passages of a 

 hay-fever subject must be very irritating. 



Exceedingly interesting were certain minute bodies, which 

 were recognized as fungus-spores. Some were in the form of 

 Indian clubs, others like tiny barrels, others again were curved 

 like the fruit of the banana. Other forms were so minute, 

 that, like the spores of some of the Mosses, five or six could be 

 contained in the space occupied by the one tiny pollen of Rag- 

 weed. So distinct from each other were many of these spores 

 that I was tempted to believe I could distinguish some of the 

 forms resulting in the same species from the curious phenomena 

 of the alternation of generations, so often manifested in the life- 

 history of one of these lowly plants, known as rust, smut or 

 mould. I think these fungus-spores came from the village shade- 

 tress, the fruit-orchards and vineyards. 



I was somewhat surprised to find that while the October 

 catch at the beginning of the month contained a few pollens, 

 and these of Ragweed, it soon ceased to show any. This 



