Miscellaneous. 247 



which I have sliowii in my paper and communications on sex, per- 

 mits no further deyelopment here. But in the case of the female 

 flower the leaf maintains a separate organization all through the 

 catkin or cone ; and, as shown in my paper on the stipules of 

 Magnolia, the midrib of the leaf shortens, and, assuming a stipu- 

 lar character, increases in width, imtil we have the purple bractese 

 so well known in Larix:. As soon as these bractece have been ar- 

 rested in their development, the carpellary scales, which answer 

 to the phj'lloidal fascicles of Piiius, commence their growth in most 

 species of larch, finally equalling the bracts in length. 



Whether or not the ovules which appear in the axis of the car- 

 pellary scales again result from a third longitudinal bud, I have no 

 evidence ; what I have proposed to myself in this paper is simply 

 to show that the scales in the male catkin of Larix are modified 

 true leaves ; while in the female they arise from buds of another or- 

 ganization, heincj the inetamorphosed secondary leaves, or phylloidal 

 shoots, as I term them, of other Coniferous genera. — Proc. Acad. Nat. 

 Sciences of Philadeljyhia, 1871, pp. 106-108. 



Supplementary Note on the Genus Lichenocrinus. By F. B. Meek; 



Since writing the remarks published in the October number of 

 the American Journal*, I have received from Mr. Dyer a very com- 

 plete suite of specimens belonging to the two known species of this 

 curious type. One of these specimens seems almost to demonstrate 

 that the long, slender, column-like appendage mentioned in the 

 descriptions cannot correspond to the ventral tube or so-called pro- 

 boscis of crinoids. This specimen is a small individual of L. Dyeri, 

 only measuring 0-22 inch in diameter across the disk ; yet its column- 

 like appendage measures near 2-80 inches in length, and tapers very 

 gradually and regularly from a diameter of 0-03 inch near the disk, 

 to that of scarcely O'Ol inch near the free end, where it actually ap- 

 pears to taper to a mucronate point. Of course the canal, within so 

 attenuated an appendage, must be extrem.elj' minute, and could 

 scarcely have performed the same functions as that of the ventral 

 tube of a crinoid, even if open at the free end, which is at least ex- 

 ceedingly improbable. 



The extreme tenuity of the free end of this appendage (which 

 I had already mentioned as an objection to viewing it as a ventral 

 tube) appears to be almost, if not quite, as strong an objection to 

 the suggestion that possibly the disk might have been a root, with 

 the real body attached at the other extremity of the long appendage ; 

 since it is scarcely possible that a body could have been supported 

 at the free end of such an extremely slender, hair-like organ as that 

 of the specimen under consideration. 



This and some of the other specimens also show that, at least in 

 the species Dyeri, this long appendage, although apparently equally 

 divided longitudinally by five sutures along its entire length, does 

 not always have the pieces of which it is composed distinctly alter- 

 nating and interlocking along these sutures, excepting near the disk. 

 * See the 'Annals' for November, 1871, p. 341. 



