298 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [APRIL 
to them were secured by placing the nectar so that the visitor in obtain- 
ing it would strike the anthers in one case and the stigma in the other. 
The advent of the bees, which feed their young principally on pollen, 
and whose most abundant and most efficient visits are for that purpose, 
has changed the conditions. The flowers best adapted to bees are 
those whose receptive stigmas are so near the dehiscing anthers that 
the bees cannot collect the pollen without coming in contact with the 
stigmas. Diclinous, dichogamous, and large flowers are often visited 
by bees which rarely touch the stigmas. The diclinous plants particu- 
larly seem to suffer from having their pollen carried away by female 
bees which pay-little attention to the pistillate flowers. Under these 
conditions it is a question whether anemophily would be much more 
expensive or precarious for many diclinous entomophilous flowers. 
In many cases the views here advanced are not supported by the 
Engler and Prantl classification, and involve a criticism of that system. 
But they are supported by the modification of the systems of Engler 
and Prantl, and Bentham and Hooker, proposed by Bessey in the 
BOTANICAL GAZETTE 24: 145-178. 1897, and, as far as they go, tend to 
supplement his conclusions regarding the taxonomy of angiosperms 
That author says nothing about the mode of pollination, but the forms 
which he selects as primitive involve the conclusion that the original 
forms were entomophilous. Bessey places a number of controverted 
families in entomophilous groups: Salicaceae after Tamaricaceae In 
Caryophyllales; Urticaceae in Malvales; Fagaceae, Betulaceae, and 
Juglandaceae in Sapindales; Typhaceae with Aroideae in Nudiflorae. 
—CHARLES ROBERTSON, Carlinville, Ill. 
ARCTERICA, THE RAREST GENUS OF HEATHERS. 
(WITH TWO FIGURES) 
In the Harvard University Herbarium is a specimen of an erica- 
ceous plant which has a singular and interesting history. The speci- 
men is a mere fragment, 43" in length, yet its characters are so cleat 
and remarkable that Dr. Asa Gray in 1885 described it as a new species, 
Casstope oxycoccoides,? and the present writer, while segregating two 
species from Cassiope under the generic name Harrimanella in 1991, 
found in this plant sufficient characters to warrant setting it aside as a 
third genus, Arcterica. 
* GRAY, A., Proc. Am. pe 20:300. 26 Ja 1885; Gray in STEJNEGER, Proc 
U.S. Nat. Mus. 7:534. 27 Ja 188 
SCOVILLE, F. V., Proc. ok Acad. Sci. 3: 569-576. figs. 62-66. 1901. 
