I36 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. [May, 



Scrophularjaceas, but also of the great cohort of Personates is zygomorphic. 

 In the Campanula the irregularity is limited to the deflection of the 

 style, while in Verbascum it involves both the stamens and petals. I sup- 

 pose the type of Scrophulariacese to have been a flower with a tube long 

 enough to cover the stamens so that insects could not light upon them, 

 and so narrow as to crowd the stamens and style when they changed to 

 the upper wall. The common form is both nototribe and didynamous, 

 but I do not believe that a flower like Verbascum, with rotate corolla and 

 exposed stamens, could develop either of these characters. Delpino re- 

 gards Mentha as a degraded form of the Labiate type, and I am inclined 



to think that he is right. . 



Finally, for a discussion of zygomorphy from the standpoint of 

 natural selection, and for a refutation of Henslow's view that floral organs 

 must have varied simultaneously,see Bot. Gaz. xiii, 146, 203, 224. 



K. 



Some queer botany. 



One runs across some funny botany in doctor books designed for 

 home use ! A few days ago I picked up a vade meciwi of this sort written 

 by an M M. D." who further styles himself "Licentiate of the Royal College 

 of Physicians, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (London)," with 

 a lot more of high-sounding degrees. Here is what amused me . " fb- 

 dopht/llum peltatum. This plant, of the genus Mandragora [nothing like 

 being scientific] has been supposed to be the same as that of which we 

 read in the Scriptures as the mandrake. Its fruit, which is round and 

 yellow, like a small orange, is very fragrant and luscious [mawkish, eaten 

 by pigs and boys, fide A. Gr.] and is eaten in the East [wonder if that 

 means "down east' 7 ] by women desirous of perfect health. The tuberous 

 (?) root is the officinal portion." And this balderdash in a "sixth edition, 

 thirty-third thousand"! M. S. B. 



Persian lilac on Weigela. 



Last summer John Thorburn, LL. D., while visiting Yarmouth, Nova 

 Scotia, discovered close to a house a bush of Japanese Weigela rosea 

 on which there was a branch of Persian lilac carrying fine trusses of 

 flowers. The specimens taken are now in our herbarium, and are un- 

 doubtedly as mentioned above. The lilac bushes grew at the back of the 

 house and none where the Weigela grew. As Dr, Thorburn is one of our 

 officers and a reliable gentlemen, I mention the circumstance as being 

 noteworthy and solely on his authority. John Macoun. 



Ottawa, Canada. 



Numbers of the Gazette Wanted. 



The series of numbers making a nearly complete set of the Botani- 

 cal Gazette, which the editors have generously presented to the Marine 

 Biological Laboratory at Wood's Holl, Mass., is such a valuable acquisi- 

 tion to our library, and is to benefit such a large number of persons that 

 we are very desirous to fill out the set. Are there not among your 

 readers some who can furnish to the laboratory as gifts or for purchase 

 the lacking numbers? We require still: Vol. Ill, No. 10; Vol. VI, No. 

 9; Vol. VII, Nos. 8, 9. 11; Vol. VIII, No. 5; Vol. IX, Nos. 10, 11; Vol. \, 



Nos.7, 8, 11,12; Vol. XI, No. 1. 



Boston* Charles S. Minot. 



