THE SNAPDRAGON AND LINARIA FAMILY. 535 



Journal above cited : " I am not aware that any connection 

 has been noticed between the stigmatic movements of Musk 

 and the necessity of insect fertilisation. Vaucher remarks 

 that during the time of fecundation, M. luteus and M. glutinosus 

 will, as he himself has tried, close at the slightest touch. The 

 sensitiveness will be seen to play a useful part in fecundation. 



"I willtake the commonest species, M. moschatus, as a 

 type. The flowers vary from erect in the bud to horizontal in 

 the full-blown flower, but never hang downwards. Of the four 

 stamens, the anterior, lower, and larger pair ripen after the 

 posterior, upper, and shorter pair. Both pairs of anthers are 

 held together by hairs, and the longitudinal slits of the anther 

 open towards the lower lip, and away from the base of the 

 flower. The style is closely pressed against the upper lip of 

 the corolla, and its stigma has two large, flat, fan-shaped lobes. ' 

 In a. very young bud these lobes are closed. In a hardly- 

 opened bud the lobes are beginning to open, the lower one 

 bending back against the style : at this time it is that the 

 shorter stamens burst ; but, as they are much shorter than the 

 style, the pollen cannot reach the stigma, and its course down 

 the tube is facilitated by the, at that time, slanting position of 

 the flower. In a just-opened flower the stigmas are fully open, 

 parallel, and opposite to the lower lip of the corolla, its viscous 

 surfaces being therefore both downwards ; the shorter anthers 

 are nearly empty, and the longer ones only just beginning to 

 split; the pistil is therefore synacmic with the shorter, and 

 almost protogynous with respect to the longer stamens. 



" In a flower almost beginning to fade the longer stamens 

 are still shedding their pollen, the shorter ones are withered, 

 and the stigma be-pollened and in many cases closed. This 

 closing may, moreover, be experimentally produced by touch- 

 ing the stigmatic surface with a pencil, in which case the 

 stigmas .will .close in about thirty seconds. In faded flowers, 

 whether from contact or otherwise, the stigmatic surfaces have 

 closed. 



" From these facts it will appear that self-fertilisation by the 

 shorter stamens is impossible, and that self-fertilisation by the 

 longer stamens is rendered improbable, (i) by their bursting 

 late; (2) by the direction in which the anthers open; (3) by 

 their not reaching as far as the stigmas, and, as being anterior, 

 by being some slight distance from the upper lip ; (4) from 

 the . probability that the stigmatic surfaces may, have been 

 touched and closed before they burst at all. 



Pentstemon (Lady-gloves). A group of favourite border or 

 florists' flowers, and for the most part American, and readily 



