54 The Botanical Gazette. [February, 



species with the present material in hand. The particular differences 

 noted seem to be only of varietal significance and do not seem to 

 warrant disposing of the Mexican fern in any other way than by refer- 

 ring it to the Texan fern as a variety. I therefore name it var. 



Seaton, var. Mexicana. 



Notholcena Nealley 



J. N. Rose, of the 



National Herbarium, for their kindness and courtesy in sending to me 

 for examination the typical specimens of Notholsena Nealleyi.— Geo. 

 E. Davenport, Medford, Mass., December, 1890. 



Sareodes sangninea.— That this plant is not a root-parasite but a 

 saprophyte, was demonstrated by myself, Dr. Chas. Schaffer, and Col. 

 Hutchings of Yosemite, in 1883, an account of which was the subject 

 of one of my « Contributions." With pick and shovel we carefully 

 surrounded and undermined some plants, and then removed the earth 

 particle by particle from the ball; there was no attachment to host 

 roots, nor were there any roots of any kind in the mass of earth to 

 which they could have been attached. Fearing that the dryish earth 

 might break off some thready matters without our perceiving them, we 

 soaked some of these balls in a pool of water allowing the earth to 

 gradually float away as muddy water, with the same result. But, and 

 this is the point I want to make now, neither was there any decaying 

 vegetable matter such as we usually find around the roots of ordinary 

 saprophytes. After satisfying ourselves that the plant was not a para- 

 site and that it must be a saprophyte, one was selected in what one 

 might call almost pure sand, but no trace of vegetable matter was ap- 

 parent to the unaided vision. The plant seems scarcely symbiotic 

 in the proper sense of the term. My own conclusions were that in 

 some unexplained way, the plant was able to draw nitrogenous and 

 other material from the earth without the aid of organs necessary to 

 this end in most cases. What Dr. Oliver calls roots we did not find, 

 -nothing but a spongy looking or coral-like mass of cellular tissue. 



bince the pretty speculation regarding the nitrogenic agency of 

 fungi in preparing food for saprophytic plants has been developed, we 

 can detect some^of this character by olfactory evidence, which I have 

 found very satisfactory in most cases. This speculation had not been 

 laid before us in ,883, or it would have been tested then,-but the 

 odor of fungi, if any there were, must have been very slight or it would 

 have been noted— Thomas Meehan, Philadelphia. 



