*4 8 The Botayiical Gazette. [May, 



than the rest, so that the scape wheel is outside the frame, i. e. above it 

 in the position described, being supported by a bearing not in the 

 frame itself, but in a separate piece bent and riveted to the frame. This 

 piece must be cut away and a new bearing made for the shaft under 

 the scape wheel instead of above, which any ingenious boy can easily 

 do. This leaves the scape wheel free to carry the seed pans. 



Solder the middle of a stout, horizontal brass wire six inches long 

 to the face of the scape wheel, and to each end of this wire a deep tin 

 pill-box, an inch and a half in diameter, one for a seed pan and the 

 other to be filled with ballast for a counterpoise. The edge of the 

 pill-box, not its face, should be towards the wheel, and the face of it 

 should be inclined at an angle of about sixty degrees to the horizon 

 so that the radicles of the germinating seeds in their downward growth 



_ face of the box. Most of this face 

 should becut away and a piece of glass put inside to serve as a win- 

 dow. Against this put the seeds, already germinated so that their 

 radicles begin to appear, placing the radicles so as to point downward; 

 fill the box with moist saw-dust, and set it going in a warm place, 

 using a heavy driving weight (I used about twelve pounds). This 

 will make the brass arms carrying the pill-boxes revolve at a suffi- 

 cient rate to create considerable centrifugal force in the boxes. The 

 germinating radicles will feel the force of this enough to deflect them 

 at a considerable angle from the perpendicular. 



The apparatus will run several hours and if you do not want to sit 

 up nights to wind it, all the better, as the direction of growth during 

 the night will be so obviously different from that during the day when 

 the apparatus is running as to make the experiment more conclusive. 



against 



JVebrask 



a. 



Notes from Columbus, Ohio.— Among my last summer's collections 

 from this vicinity was a form of Bidens connata Muhl. which was 

 typical in every respect except that it had upwardly barbed awns. 

 Or. hereno VV arson, to whom the specimen was submitted, pronounced 

 it unchanged ,n other characters. In making a revision of Sullivant's 

 catalogue of plants of this vicinity, I find mention of plants near B. 

 frondosa L., "except smaller and smoother; heads fewer-flowered, 

 with pappus upwardly scabrous." 



The following species of western plants, with the exception of 

 Dysodia (not heretofore known ,n this locality), were collected the last 

 of October about the winter-quarters of Sells Brothers' Circus, at Se- 

 ville Ohio, near Columbus, the Croton alone being out of bloom: 

 Erodium cicutanum, Aster pauciflorus, Amphiachyris dracunculoides, 

 Dysodia chrysanthemoides, Gutierrezia Texana, Helenium nudi- 



