NA TURE-S TUD Y A ND SCIENCE NO TES 27s 



though assent was withheld by the same speaker from the proposition to 

 have the members of every English literature class dissect a nautilus when 

 studying Holmes's poem. That there is nothing poetical in the bare 

 facts of nature, and that nothing is really interesting unless invested with 

 poetry or fancy, are two ideas that can never, it seems, appear erroneous^ 

 except to one who has studied nature at first hand. 



Sugar-coating the supposed pills of scientific fact in nature-study 

 literature and teaching has been baneful enough, but when articles in 

 reputable magazines, intended for mature minds, poeticize science to the 

 verge of misrepresentation, it is difficult to know whether to blame the 

 author the more, or regretfully to decide that, after all, the general public 

 is still unable to appreciate natural facts as nature presents them. 



A series of three articles in Harper's Monthly Magazine for December, 

 1906, and February and March, 1907, entitled "The Intelligence of the 

 Flowers," by Maurice Maeterlinck, have been the inspiration of this 

 protest. 



To say that no flower is "whollv devoid of wisdom;" that, in order to 

 deprive a flower of reason and will, "we must needs resort to very obscure 

 hypotheses;" that it is in the vegetable world that "impatience, the 

 revolt against destiny, are the most vehement and stubborn;" and that 

 the pollination of the eel-grass is "a tragic episode," may be most excellent 

 poetry, and enhance the literary value of an article; may, indeed, for 

 aught we know, be the necessary conclusions of a poet, but to read such 

 statements in cold print congeals the blood of any botanist. 



Still we might shiver in charity if interpretations only, and not facts,, 

 were open to question. We are told, for example, that the tip of the 

 young stem of a seeding laurel tree, because the seed germinated on a 

 perpendicular rock- wall, "instead of rising towards the sky, bent down 

 over the gulf," notwithstanding its geotropism. 



We learn that dodder "voluntarily abandons its roots," and that it will 

 avoid other species and "go some distance, if necessary, in search of the 

 stem of hemp, hop, lucerne or flax." 



In the second article we learn, for the first time, that the -flowers of 

 Drosera and Nepenthes are carnivorous, and that the problem of cross- 

 fertilization is "normally insoluble." Here, also, obsolete terminology 

 is perpetuated in the expression "fertilization of the stigma," and obsolete 

 interpretation in referring to the stigma as the "female organ," and to 

 the stamens as the "male organs" of the flower. 



"All that we observe within ourselves," says Maeterlinck, "is rightly 

 open to suspicion ; and we are too greatly interested in peopling our world 

 with magnificent illusions and hopes." Perhaps this explains the im- 

 possible botany of the articles, but it can not excuse it. 



[C.Stuart Gager in 5«>m<:^.] 



Turpentine Cups. The old plan of cutting deep boxes in the trees, in 

 which turpentine collected after running down the scarified trunks, was 

 universal until a few years ago. It was wasteful and destructive. Trees 

 so mutilated survived only about four years. They might continue to 

 live, and they usually did not fall for years, but their value as turpentine- 



