20 



on several branches on the south and west sides of the tree — the 

 sides of best development — though even on these branches some 

 twigs bore normal catkins. The abnormal catkins consisted 

 chiefly of flowers with the deep cup-shaped receptacles of pistil- 

 late flowers with one pistil and one or two stamens, both pistil 

 and stamens being functional. A few had perfect stamens but 

 an aborted pistil, some a very small but apparently functional 

 pistil. Near the tip of the catkins the flowers were very irregular 

 with from four to six stamens, some with, some without a pistil. 

 Scattered along the axis were ordinary pistillate flowers. Other 

 catkins were predominately staminate. In these most of the 

 flowers had the cup-shaped receptacles characteristic of pistillate 

 flowers, but each with a number of stamens (4-6), and no pistil. 

 Near the tip there was even greater irregularity than in the 

 others. Around a terminal perfect flower were some staminate 

 flowers with ten or more stamens and some stamens growing in 

 the axils of smooth-edged scales. The figures show a few of the 

 normal flowers, as well as several of the abnormal ones. The 

 normal flowers were drawn from flowers of neighboring trees. 

 Longitudinal sections of a normal pistillate flower and of one of 

 the perfect ones are also shown. In the normal flower there was 

 no trace of rudimentary stamens nor of bundle traces that might 

 indicate their position. There is nothing to indicate that these 

 perfect flowers show reversion to ancestral conditions, the expla- 

 nation must be rather in some irregularity in the division of 

 chromosomes. The tree had been struck by rolling stones and 

 patches of bark knocked off, but the injury was no greater than 

 on dozens of normal trees in the immediate vicinity. 



YONKERS 



NEWS ITEMS 



At the annual meeting of the club held at the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History on Januarj- 8, all the officers were re- 

 elected for 1918. President Richards announces the same 

 committees for 1918 as before with the addition of Mr. George 

 T. Hastings to the Field Committee. 



