150 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 
sile flowers.” From which it would seem that the original Canterbury Bell is 
no longer a Cumpanula! Mr. J Morgan accordingly transfer 
Campanula Americana to Specularia. But that species has not erect flowers, while 
a large number of Campanulas have ; and botanists know plenty of the latter with 
flowers as nearly sessile as those of the Venus’s Looking-glass, and several with 
corollas quite as rotate. 
Borany receives due recognition in the prizes awarded by the French Acad- — 
emy of Sciences. Among the awards for 1883, given in May last, was the Des- 
maziéres Prizeto MM. Bonnier and Mangin for their memoir on “ Respiration 
and Transpiration of Fungi,” and the Bordin Prize to M. Costantin for best 
oot, stem and leaves; modifications undergone in water y land plants and 
those by aquatic plants compelled to live in th air; explanation of the special 
form of some marine plant.” The Desmazidre Prize for 1884 will be given for 
“The most useful work on cryptogamous plants,” and the De la Fons Melicocq 
Prize for 1886 for “The best treatise on the flora of North France.” 
R. T. L, Purrson, of London, gives some results in the Chemical News for 
July 25, of a long series of observations on the assimilation of plants. He finds 
that when alge grown in spring water are constantly supplied with fresh carbon 
dioxide, instead of fresh water, as the experiment is usually performed, they 
give off less and less oxygen and finally none at all; als), that if spring water Is 
r 
cally something like this: CO, -+HO,—CHO+0,, or CHO, +0,, or CHO, 
O, or, again, 2CO,+HO,=C,HO,-+0,, ete. The conclusion if sustained #8 
very important. 
Iv 1s Now PRETTY well settled that the cells of plants are not the units, sep- 
arate and individual, out of which they are built. Since the discovery of the 
sieve tubes by Hartig in 1837, and more especially since the demonstration of 
the perforations in their septa and the continuity of the protoplasm through 
mic continuity more extended. Recent investigations seem to leave little doubt 
that the protoplasm of plants is continuous throughout, and instead of a multl- 
tude of cells combined into a tissue w 
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tween the daughter-nuclei when the cell is undergoing division, the increase se 
number being due to the longitudinal splitting and the formation of ine a 
ing cellulose. Gardiner holds that ordinarily the function of these threads * 
to permit the transmission of impulses from one part of the plant to anothers 
while in endosperm cells and sieve tubes they “make possible a transference 
solid materials.” os 
