8o 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



close to the margin, into tertiary rays. Between 

 the rays is stretched the usual transparent 

 membrane. There are also a pair of large ventral 

 fins, medium ventral and dorsal small fins near the 

 tail. The usual large first dorsal fin which one 

 sees in most fish is conspicuous by its absence. 

 The two flukes of the tail are unequal, but, unlike 

 most fish which have unequal flukes, the sharks 

 for instance, the lower is the larger in the flying- 

 fish. 



The flying-fish has a very tough skin, and it is 

 quite easy to remove it and stuff with tow, but is 

 pretty nearly impossible to prevent the scales, 

 which are very large, from cracking off, which 

 they do wherever the skin is grasped or bent. The 

 sailors scrape out the flesh from an incision in the 

 middle line of the abdomen, and then fill up with 



tow, and after spreading the fins out with pins 

 allow them to dry. Another plan is to gut 

 them, spread out the fins with small pieces of 

 wood and put them into the " harness " cask to get 

 pickled with salt, then to dry them in the sun. 

 The worst of all these plans is that the fish lose 

 their lovely colours and become dull, ugly-looking 

 objects, which convey no idea of their original 

 beauty. Why these fish fiy I do not know, but 

 there seems much in support of the view taken 

 by the sailors, that they do so to escape from 

 their hereditary foes, the dolphins. They often 

 get up just under the ship's bows, or on the 

 beam, and flit away over waves as if to escape 

 from an unknown danger in the shape of the 

 steamer's hull. 



Para ; June gth, i8g7. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LIFE-HISTORIES OF PLANTS. 



By Thomas Meehan. 



(Continued from Page 39J 



Honey-Glands of Flowers. 

 T T is impossible to take up any subject connected 

 with the behaviour of plants without a thought 

 of the wonderful labours of Darwin in the same 

 line. We owe him warmest gratitude for the 

 direction he has trained us to follow. But some 

 of us believe that the great field of vision he 

 opened up to us is broader than ever he himself 

 suspected, and that many more behaviours of 

 plants are to be seen and interpreted than it was 

 given to him to behold and explain. It is, more- 

 over, clear that the a priori line on which he started 

 must naturally bias judgment. It is not in human 

 nature to be free from such bias. Feeling that 

 every act and behaviour of a plant must originate 

 in a selfish effort for its own good, the doctrine of 

 natural selection naturally followed. The natural 

 condition of life being that of continual war, every 

 effort of a plant was to secure some advantage 

 in this great struggle. Whatever helped this view 

 could not but be welcomed, even by one who was 

 so unusually fair-minded at Darwin. Whatever 

 did not accord with his premises could not be con- 

 sidered as of much importance. Some of us have 

 departed from the path of our great leader. To us 

 it seems that while selfishness is an undoubted 

 condition of existence, self-sacrifice is equally a 

 natural law. It appears to be the higher develop- 

 ment of the original condition — the raisoti d'etre 

 why selfishness exists. Facts which Mr. Darwin 

 would treat lightly we may be pardoned for 

 desiring to see more clearly elaborated. 



The honey-glands in flowers have been, in Mr. 

 Darwin's view, so closely related to the encourage- 

 ment of insect visitors, that their production where 



they could have little reference to the fertilization of 

 flowers is lightly treated. He refers ( l ) to an observa- 

 tion of Karr, that the bracteas of some orchids 

 secrete nectar, that Fritz Miiller has seen a similar 

 behaviour in the bract of Oncidium, in Brazil, and 

 that Mr. Rodgers had seen a similar secretion from 

 the brace of the flower-peduncles of Vanilla. That 

 he could have seen this frequently in the species 

 of orchids under his own observation is probable. 

 He names Phaius as one of the genera in which he 

 examined the flowers for nectar(-). I am sure I 

 have seen honey-glands similarly situated in many 

 orchids, but they are very evident in Phaius grandi- 

 folius, a common species under cultivation, and 

 probably the one Mr. Darwin had under observa- 

 tion. 



I have had before me for a couple of weeks past 

 a Nepalese species not uncommon in gardens, 

 Cymbidium aloei/olium, in which the copious supply 

 of nectar from the base of the bract, or rather 

 from the main stem at this point, attracts general 

 attention. It will be of interest to describe 

 the development of the inflorescence in detail. 

 The spike has sixteen flower-buds on it. The 

 peduncles are at an acute angle with the main 

 stem, and perfectly straight until the bud has 

 reached its full size and is ready to expand. 

 When this stage is reached the peduncle takes 

 a horizontal position and then makes a twist, 

 curving upwardly, and the labellum, which up 

 to this time had formed the upper portion of the 

 perianth, becomes the lower. Many days before 

 this occurrence the nectar commences to oose from. 



( l l " Fertilization of Orchids," chap. ix. 

 ( 2 ) Ibid., chap. v. 



