1893. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 5 
parent plant. Thus the elasticity of the dead stem may be as 
important to the species as any character in the living plant. 
Many annual plants, however, have burrs, and in these species 
the dead stem is more flexible and tougher, so that it bends and rubs 
the fruit against the fur of an animal, or against our clothing. The 
different character of the dead stem will at once be recognised in the 
Wild Carrot, the ripe burr-like fruit of which curl inward, so that 
they cannot be shaken off, but come away a few at a time when 
the plant is stroked by anything rough. 
This is merely one example of what can be observed in late 
autumn and winter; but anyone who has visited a beech or oak wood 
during a gale in the fruiting season, will understand why such fruit 
grow on the tips of long flexible branches, instead of on thick stems. 
The stinging blow that can be given by an acorn under these circum- 
stances will soon convince the naturalist of the important part played 
by the flexible branch. Even the gale that tears off large arms may 
be of great use to the species, though ruinous to the individual tree. 
A NATURALIST IN THE WEsT INDIES. 
Mr. W. R. Et.iort, who hasbeen collecting Cellular Cryptogams 
during the last year in St. Vincent, Anguilla, and Dominica for the 
West India (Natural History) Exploration Committee, has met with 
considerable success. In his last expedition, he has made a prolonged 
examination of the highest peaks of Dominica, the most densely 
wooded and primitive of all the Antilles, except, perhaps, Hayti, ‘ the 
black republic,” of which very little is known. He has obtained a 
very large series of Hepaticee which Mr. Spruce has undertaken to 
work out, while he has added to the large number of Fungi already 
collected and partly described by Mr. George Massee in the Fournal of 
Botany. 
Among other things of which Mr. Elliott has been in quest is the 
petrel, the Diablotin, supposed to occur only in Trinidad. He has 
found the holes frequented by the birds, and at the time of his 
last letter was awaiting the possible re-appearance of a stray specimen 
or two, since the season (November) had arrived at which this might 
be expected. He visited the Carib reservation of Salybia on the 
windward coast of the island, but his account adds little of note to 
that given of the expiring remnant of this people by Mr.Ober in 
his interesting Camps in the Caribbees, except that the race of true 
Caribs is now in much the same case as the Diablotin. It would be 
of interest, and even a negative result would be of some value, if a 
local naturalist of St. Vincent or Grenada were toexamine, at the proper 
season, some of the higher, less accessible, and seldom visited island 
peaks among the Grenadines whence reports have come at different 
times of the appearance of a bird resembiing the Diablotin. 
