SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



gence or angular distance of each leaf from the next 

 will therefore be two-fifths of the circumference of 

 the stem. This same arrangement, which is ex- 

 pressed by the fraction two-fifths, is found in the 

 apple, the cherry, and various plants. 



Position of Flowers. — The oak, like the beech, is 

 monoecious, the staminate and pistillate organs 

 being in separate flowers although borne on the 

 same tree. The inflorescence is lateral — never, I 

 believe, terminal — and therefere never interrupting 

 the growth of the leading shoot. The staminate 



bud formed. The varying length of this peduncle 

 has already been mentioned. In the oak we do not 

 find, as in the lime, a leaf-bud formed in the same 

 axil as that from which the fruit-stalk springs, but 

 the fruit-stalk, when falling off, leaves a scar closely 

 joined with, and on the inner side of, that left by the 

 leaf in whose axil it originated. It may, perhaps, 

 be that the abnormal formation of a small leaf-bud 

 near the tip of a peduncle, as just now mentioned, 

 indicates that the peduncle itself would not fall off 

 with the acorns, but would remain and develop a 



Querctis sessiliflora. (Autumnal state.) 



flowers are arranged in loose catkins which spring 

 in tufts, without any leafy accompaniment, from 

 axillary buds on the lower portion of the previous 

 year's woody shoot. The axillary buds on the 

 upper portion of the same shoot give rise to new 

 shoots, from the axils of whose leaves (commonly 

 about the seventh leaf and onwards towards the 

 tip) the fertile inflorescence takes its rise. The 

 fertile flowers, and the acorns which succeed them, 

 are borne on a stalk or peduncle of varying length, 

 and near the tip of which we sometimes find a leaf- 



weakly shoot in the following year. I have not 

 been able to make certain as to this. 



In the oak we find the peculiarity that the 

 staminate flowers spring from the wood of the past 

 year, the fertile ones from the shoot of the present 

 season. If, then, we examine, towards the close of 

 summer, the shoots of the past arid present seasons, 

 we find the lower part of last year's wood bare of 

 leaves, and showing only the scars from whence the 

 leaves and staminate catkins have fallen, whilst 

 the upper portion of the same (last year's) shoot 



