92 NOTES AND COMMENTS [AUGUST 
Colours of Northern Monocotyledons. 
Mr. Joun H. Lovett has arranged, according to their colours, the 
1058 species of northern monocotyledonous flowers recognised in 
the “Illustrated Flora” of Britton and Brown, and finds there are 
41 yellow, 82 white, 22 red, 22 purple, 34 blue, and 857 green 
or dull, the last set being of course enormously swollen because 
of the large number of grasses, sedges, and the like. It is useful to 
have the facts of colour-distribution clearly before us, and when 
we have this it is almost impossible to refrain from drawing infer- 
ences, which may or may not be correct. Those which Mr. Lovell 
has drawn (Amer. Naturalist, xxxiii. 1899, pp. 495-504) are the 
following :— 
The primitive colour of the perianth of the monocotyledonous 
families was green, as it still is in the greater part of the species 
which are anemophilous or self-fertilised. A few of the oldest 
families, with an indefinite number of stamens and carpels spirally 
arranged, have probably never possessed floral envelopes. 
Yellow, white, and lurid or greenish-purple flowers, have in 
numerous instances been derived directly from the primitive green ; 
red flowers have passed through a yellow or white stage; and 
blue and purple-blue have been derived from yellow, white, or 
red forms. Reversion to white is most common, but reversion to red 
or yellow also occurs. 
Physiological conditions appear to have often played an important 
part in determining the coloration of the petals, while “ insects 
have contributed to the fixation of such characters when once 
acquired.” 
In general, among monocotyledons yellow flowers are visited 
by bees and flies; white flowers by bees, nocturnal lepidoptera, flies, 
and beetles; lurid-purple by flesh flies; red by bees and butterflies ; 
and blue chiefly by bees. Red and blue flowers usually have the 
honey concealed, which is a far more effective cause of the limitation 
of insect visits than colour. When the honey is abundant and 
exposed, and the flower pleasantly odorous, it may prove attractive to 
any anthophilous insect. 
The Proper and Improper View of Heredity. 
WE are not aware of the specific diagnosis of the journal called The 
New Age, edited by S. C. Mukhopadhaya, M.A., and published in 
Calcutta, but we know that it has a larger circulation (guaranteed) 
than Natural Science, and we see very prominently on its title-page an 
advertisement of a firm of plumbers and gasfitters, to which, indeed— 
unless to its position above the titlkR—we have no objection, for the 
