202 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[September 2, 1895. 



Fig. 9. — Flower of Plautago 

 in two stages, showing 

 protogrny. 



be seen on every pasture, bending and waving in the wind. 

 In the first stage the head appears black, but on looking 

 into it we see projecting from each little unopened floret 

 a white thread-like stigma. Later on, the lower part of 

 the spike or head is seen to be encircled by a wreath of 

 tiny white bodies, and closer inspection shows that these 

 are the stamens, four of which project like little banners 

 from each of the newly-opened florets. The protogynous 

 character belongs in the bur-reed to the plant itself, rather 

 than the individual flowers. Its pistillate flowers, which 

 are lowermost, expand first ; only when their stigmas have 

 withered do the male florets higher 

 up begin discharging their pollen. 

 In this case it is evident that the 

 flowers on any plant must be fer- 

 tilized with pollen from another in 

 a more advanced condition. A 

 social habit is highly characteristic 

 of wind-fertilized plants — pines, 

 grasses, sedges, nettles, etc., 

 usually grow together in consider- 

 able numbers. Entomophilous 

 plants have a much more sporadic 

 character, and admit of a greater 

 degree of isolation ; their guests, 

 doubtless, maintain the necessary 

 communication between mem- 

 bers of the species. This social habit partly explains 

 the tendency towards the direcious condition, for a 

 complete separation of the sexes is hardly possible, 

 except in plants of social habit. From the Gymnosperms, 

 the oldest flowering plants, being all wind- 

 fertilized, it has been inferred that such 

 must also have been the case with the 

 primitive Angiosperms. It is not certain, 

 however, that any of their representatives 

 remain, for many of our existing wind- 

 fertilized flowers appear to be merely 

 degraded forms. Anemophilous species 

 occur in families, the rest of which are 

 highly specialized in relation to insects. 

 Some species of Plantago are adapted to 

 insects ; others, as we have seen, to the 

 wind. Most of the sub-class with incom- 

 plete flowers, from which so many of 

 our examples are taken, also exhibit 

 striking marks of degeneration, and the 

 same may be said of the grasses and 

 other anemophilous monocotyledons. We 

 also find some flowers in an intermediate condition, such 

 as the vine and certain willows, which secrete honey 

 and are visited by insects. Facts of this description are 

 held by some to show that all existing anemophilous 

 species, with the exception of the Gymnosperms, are 

 descended from bright-coloured, insect-fertilized ancestors. 

 Wind-fertilization has, in some instances, been rendered 

 highly eSicient, but in any case it is far from economical, 

 for the vast amount of pollen miscarried represents an 

 enormous loss to plants ; neither does this method admit 

 of the same certainty and precision as the other. A wind- 

 fertihzed bears to an iusect-fertilized blossom very much 

 the relation which an ;i?olian harp bears to a pianoforte. 



Fig. 10.— Bur- 

 reed (monoecious 

 and protogynous.) 



Diari/ of a Journey throui/h Mongolia and Tibet in 

 1891 and 1892. I'.y W. W. Rockhill. (Smithsonian 

 Institution, Washington.) The situation of Tibet, and 



the care with which the Himalayan passes are guarded to 

 prevent the entrance of strangers, have combined to keep 

 the land in comparative seclusion. Mr. Fiockhill traversed 

 a considerable section of Tibet in 1888-8ii, and gave an 

 account of the journey in his valuable work on " The 

 Land of the Lamas." His second journey, during which 

 the diary forming this volume was kept, was made in 

 1891-92. He left Pekin in November, 1891, and traversed 

 Mongolia to Kumbum, afterwards passing to Tsaidam. A 

 difticult journey was then made from the Xaich Gol to the 

 Tengri Nor, but when about thirty or forty miles from the 

 latter, and less than a month's travel from British India, 

 which ]\lr. Kockhill hoped to reach, further progress 

 southward was arrested by the Tibetans, and he was 

 forced to turn his face eastward to China. He arrived at 

 Shanghai in October, 1892, after travelling about eight 

 thousand miles, and roughly surveying three thousand 

 four hundred miles. Numerous observations for time and 

 latitude, and for altitude, were made during the journey, 

 and observations of temperature, pressure, cloudiness, 

 wind, etc., were taken three times daily. An exceedingly 

 interesting collection of plants was obtained, and have 

 been identified by Mr. W. B. Hemsley. Numerous photo- 

 graphs were taken, some of which are reproduced in the 

 volume, and many objects of ethological interest were 

 brought back to enrich the collections in the United States 

 National Museum. The publication of the results of the 

 journey in the form of a diary is rather unsatisfactory, 

 but let the reader be charitable, for, as Mr. Eockhill 

 remarks, " dirt, cold, starvation and a thous.md minor 

 discomforts which beset the explorer in Mongolia and 

 Tibet, who lives and travels like the barbarous inhabitants 

 of those wild regions, are not conducive to sustained or 

 successful literary work, as he may find out for himself if 

 he will but try it." 



The Time Machine. By H. G. Wells. (Heinemann.) 

 The average writer of novels rehes too often upon his 

 imagination for his scientific facts, and by so doing presents 

 his readers with descriptions of very unnatural phenomena. 

 Mr. Wells shows by this fantastic story that he is not as 

 other novelists are : he possesses a sound knowledge of 

 science, as well as a vivid fancy, and the ability to paint 

 word-pictures which mark him out at once as a master of 

 exegesis. By arguments comparable to those of -Tules 

 Verne in point of ingenuity, the reader is led to believe 

 that a machine was constructed to travel through time. 

 Upon such a machine the '• time traveller" journeys eight 

 hundred thousand years into the future, and finds that 

 society will then have diflerentiated into two classes, one 

 the Eloi, a listless, diminutive class, living in idleness ; 

 and the other, consisting of horrible ghoul-like creatures, 

 who had been compelled to work in darkness for so long 

 that they hated the light, and only came up to the earth's 

 surface from their underground dwellings during the night. 

 Like the ants which have been waited upon by slaves for 

 so long that they have lost the power of assisting them- 

 selves, the Eloi were helpless and thoughtless children who 

 spent their lives in indolent pleasure. This differentiation 

 of our race, based as it is upon the present state of 

 things, and worked out upon the principles of heredity, is 

 weird and strange to read about. Never before have the 

 future consequences of cosmical, biological, and social evolu- 

 tion been described in fiction so powerfully, or with greater 

 regard to what is known at the present time. Mr. Wells 

 has the scientific knowledge of Jules Verne (and more so, 

 perhaps, in biological matters), the wonderful imaginative 

 power of Poe, and a style akin to that of Stevenson. His 

 story of the " time-traveller's " adventures right up to the 

 epoch when the planets begin to fall into the sim, and 



