694 



SCIENCE 



[N. S, Vol. XLII. No. 1089 



Dr. Cohen frankly admits that he heard of 

 Lhamon's work and that Dr. Lhamon is given 

 priority by everybody including himself and 

 then claims priority for himself for the right 

 side of the heart! As a matter of fact 

 Lhamon's specimens showing injections on 

 both sides, which are still in this laboratory, 

 and which were described in his paper, were 

 made over half a year before Dr. Cohen heard 

 of how they were made through Drs. Mac- 

 Callum and Oppenheimer. 



Dr. Lhamon's manuscript on " The Sheath 

 of the Sino-ventricular Bundle " which is still 

 on file, was finished on July 22, 1911, and 

 ofiicially accepted for publication in the Amer- 

 ican Journal of Anatomy on November 3 of 

 the same year. Because Dr. Lhamon had left 

 the United States to accept an assistant pro- 

 fessorship in the Philippine Medical School in 

 August, 1911, a clerical error in the address 

 caused a delay of several months in the return 

 of the manuscript to the publishers. Hence 

 the article did not appear till March, 1912, 

 three months after Dr. Cohen's publication. 



It is significant that there also is internal 

 evidence in Dr. Cohen's report and in Dr. 

 Oppenheimer's discussion which clearly be- 

 trays the origin of their ideas. But comment 

 upon this is unnecessary and I make this state- 

 ment of the facts only in the interests of 

 truth and in justice to Dr. Lhamon and this 

 laboratory. A. W. Meyer 



SiANroRD University, 

 September 20, 1915 



THE PISTILLATE SPIKELET EST ZEA MAYS 



Hunt"^ makes the statement that in the pis- 

 tillate spikelet in Zea Mays, each spikelet is 

 two flowered, the lower one being abortive. 

 Our most recent work on the grasses, by Hitch- 

 cock^ contains a similar statement, as do all of 

 the other botanical text-books examined which 

 treat of this subject. The prevailing idea 

 seems to be that the pistillate spikelet in this 

 species never contains more than one well- 

 developed flower. 



1 ' ' Cereals in America, ' ' p. 147, Orange Judd 

 Company, 1904. 



2 "A Text-book of Grasses," p. 161, The Mao- 

 millan Company, 1914. 



I had occasion some time ago to prepare 

 material of corn spikelets for a class in syste- 

 matic botany, and as I was growing the 

 Country Gentleman variety of corn in my 

 garden at the time, I used this. I was un- 

 able, however, to flnd any indication of the 

 sterile flower in many of the spikelets, which 

 led to closer observation. I soon discovered 

 that some of the spikelets had two well-devel- 

 oped flowers inside each pair of glumes, and 

 that others had but one such flower and an- 

 other one partially developed. All gradations 

 occurred in the same ear between spikelets 

 with but one well-developed flower and those 

 which had two. 



Those who are familiar with this variety 

 of corn will probably remember that the grains 

 are irregularly arranged on the cob in many 

 places, and that they do not always occur in 

 regular rows as is commonly the case in corn. 

 This irregularity is probably due to the fact 

 that the development of the second flower in 

 many of the spikelets tends to throw some of 

 the grains out of alignment. 



Alban Stewart 



University op "Wisconsin 



A remarkable flight of caddis flies and 



CHIRONOMIDS 



On the evening of September 8, 1909, while 

 the writer was crossing the upper part of 

 Currituck Sound, N. C, the air seemed filled 

 with flying insects. They were so numerous 

 over the water that vision was restricted to 

 a much shorter radius than usual. The con- 

 stant impacts of the insects against the face 

 became annoying, the more so that they main- 

 tained their frequency throughout the six- 

 mile sail across the sound. 



Early the next morning I boarded the small 

 steamer Comet, which had come from many 

 miles down the Sound during the night. On 

 this boat there was plentiful evidence of the 

 swarm of insects. There was a layer of in- 

 sects between the glass cover and the poster, 

 concealing the print in every one of the 

 framed shipping regulations and notices of 

 various kinds about the steamer. How the 



