174 Miscellaneous. 



the spermatophores attached to the plastron, and derived from them. 

 These spermatozoids are thus in direct contact with the ova, and 

 in the midst of the vehicle which facilitates their penetration. Fe- 

 cundation, then, is accomplished in this chamber — that is to say, 

 outside the genital organs of the female. 



M. C. Eobin, who has been kind enough to ascertain these facts 

 with me, has also seen that the spermatozoids which are found in 

 contact with the ova in the chamber which I have just described 

 are similar to those seen in the genital organs of the males and to 

 those in the spermatophores attached to the thorax. They are in 

 the form of flattened cells, with 5-7 rigid immovable cilia starting 

 from their contour, and with a barrel-shaped projection about their 

 middle. During the first two days following the oviposition, these 

 spermatozoids, which are very abundant around the ova and in the 

 mucus, become spherical and pale, and remain motionless ; in the 

 following days they wither, and also become smaller, darker, and 

 irregular. Lastly, when, after the fixation of the ova, the excess of 

 the mucus has completely disappeared in consequence of the pres- 

 sure exerted by the incessant contractions of the abdomen (which 

 takes place in a variable period of from eight to ten days after the 

 oviposition), those spermatophores which still remain attached to the 

 plastron consist of small, white, coriaceous filaments, either isolated 

 or mutually adherent ; they no longer show any thing but a central 

 cavity, in which the microscope reveals only a few more or less 

 withered spermatozoids. The wall of these spermatophores retains 

 its thickness, and remains, as before, composed of a concrete, striated, 

 tenacious mucus. — Co^nptes liendus, January 15, 1872, tome Ixxiv. 

 pp. 201,202. 



Baptisia perfoliata, the Arrangement and Morpliology of its Leaves. 

 In a paper sent by Mr. Eavenel to Prof. Gray, and read by him 

 at the last meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, the character of the torsion of the stem by which 

 the foliage on summer shoots becomes unilateral is explained. It 

 had been hastily supposed by the present writer that the leaves 

 were five-ranked, and became one-ranked by a continuous torsion 

 of the stem. Mr. Ravenel points out that the phyllotaxis of the 

 plant in question is really of the two-ranked order, which inspec- 

 tion of the growing shoots makes abundantly clear, and that they 

 become one-ranked by the alternate twisting of the successive in- 

 ternodes right and -left; i.e. one twists to the right, the next as 

 much to the left, the next in the opposite direction, and so on, thus 

 bringing the leaves into a vertical position all on one side of the 

 horizontal branch. It occurred to Mr. llavenel that this vertical 

 position of the leaves was correlated with the remarkable alternate 

 torsion of the axis — namely, that the leaves on the reclining branches 

 were adjusting themselves so as to present their two faces as equally 



her of granulated rounded globules, isolated or united in little masses, 

 which do not exist in the cavity of the spermatophores, where the sper- 

 matozoids alone are to be found. 



