4 NATURAL ‘SCIENCE. Jan., 
establishment and another—briefly, no definitely established system 
for the general governance of these institutions ; hence tacit rivalries, 
which sometimes develop into flagrant antagonisms. The bounds of 
jurisdiction or the several provinces of these institutions overlap in all 
directions, and their respective interests clash.” 
Everyone acquainted with the Natural History Departments of 
the British Museum and the allied public institutions of more recent 
foundation, will recognise how appropriately these remarks apply to 
them. The originally economic aims of Kew Gardens, for example, have 
expanded to such an extent that the Herbarium is in constant rivalry 
with that of the British Museum, separating collections which ought 
to be united, and duplicating collections in other instances. The 
Museum of Practical Geology, also, continually acquires fossils which 
are of little or no value for stratigraphical or economic purposes, and 
which, from their unique interest in an anatomical sense, ought to be 
placed with the purely scientific collections in Cromwell Road. 
When the Art Museums are re-organised, by all means let the 
Science Museums be similarly controlled, and the reformation will be 
not merely economical, but conducive to efficiency. 
Tue BotTanist IN WINTER. 
THOUGH so many of our native plants lie dormant in the winter, 
the time is not lost even for them. We perhaps go into the lanes or 
fields and see only withered stalks, or ripe fruit waiting to be picked 
or shaken off. We say to ourselves that the year is finished, and 
nothing more is to be done till life revives with the first warm days 
of spring. This idea, however, is quite mistaken, for the botanist 
who has the good fortune to be in the field Bee sees things that are 
quite unknown to the summer rambler. e soon learns that though 
life may be dormant, or even extinct, in the dead stalks, yet they are 
not therefore merely cumbering the ground and waiting for decay. 
In many of our native plants the adaptation of the means to the end 
does not cease with life, and the dying or dead stem is often modified 
to help to protect or disperse the seeds. 
Winter botany has been little studied, but there is much to be 
learnt. For instance, the dead, unsightly umbellifers, so common in 
every hedge, are still playing their part. Instead of the green, flexible 
stem found in the summer, we see a stiff, elastic stalk, with thin 
whip-like tips, from which the fruit, separating from the axis, dangle 
by one corner. Anyone who has seen boys throw pellets of clay by 
means of a switch, and has afterwards forced his way through dead 
umbelliferous stems, like those of the Wild Chervil, will at once 
realise the great use of the elastic stalk, the whip-like tip, and the 
divided carpophore with its dangling fruit. Each passing animal 
and every breeze bends the stalk, which, springing back, tends to 
fling the fruit well beyond the limit of the ground exhausted by the 
