^ SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. 45 
exist. "The little flies I have seen on the flowers of Grasses seemed bent 
on depositing their eggs in the nascent ovaries, but may also have aided 
in cross-fertilization. In the Ninam Valley, Grasses are often infested 
y ants, who, indeed, leave nothing organic unvisited throughout that 
vast region ; and they also, T think, “cannot help er rage transferring 
grains of pollen from one flower to another. ‘The flowers of Palms an 
Grasses agree in being usually small and obscurely co dd "a but contrast 
greatly in the former being in many cases exquisitely ‘and strongly 
scented, whereas in the latter they are neas uite less, The 
odour of Palm flowers often resembles that of Mignonette ; but I think a 
whole acre of that * darling " weed would not emit more perfume than a 
single plant of the Fan “Palm of the Rio Negro (Mauritia Carará, 
Wallace). In approaching one of these plants through the thick forest, 
the sense of hearing would erhaps give the first notice of its proximity, 
rom the merr y hum of winged insects which its scented flowers had 
drawn ii to feast on the oney, and 4 transport the pollen of the 
male to the female plants; for it is chiefly dioicous species of Palms that 
have such sweet flowers. The absence of odérifütods ice from the 
d 
unlikely. 1f the flowers of Grasses be sometimes fertilized in the bud, 
it is probably exceptional, like the similar cases recorded of Orchids and 
many other families." —4A. W. 
GERMINATION OF DELPHINIUM.—In the ‘ Journal of Botany for De- 
cember last (Vol. IX. p. 375), observations by Dr. Asa Gray, in * Silliman's 
videns) are quoted, regarding a presumed hy pocotyledonary gemmation 
occurring in D. nudicaule. Dr. Gray believes that here the plumule 
ibis nbe and that its place is taken by a hypocotyledonary bud. 
e by Bernhardi (* Ueber die merkwürdigsten Verschiedenheiten des 
entwickelten Pflanzenembryo,” Linnea, vii. 1832, p. 561), the other by 
Irmisch (* Ueber einige Ranuneulaceen, ” «Botanische Zeitung,’ Jan. 4, 
1 , from which it appears that the phenomenon to w ich Dr. Gray 
refers, 'and which occurs in different species of Delphinium and Anemone, 
in several Umbellifere, etc. ete., is due to the fact, that in the = in 
question the bases of t e coty edons are connate into a narrow tube, 
which, to quote from Irmisch, “ may e easily, by he dieat: examination, 
be mistaken for the hypocotyledonary axis;” that the growing plumule, 
instead of going up this tube, which is too narrow for its passage, bursts 
through it a the side. In this way a “ hypocotyledonary g gemma ion ” is 
simulated. very curious case is described in Bernhardi's Mem 
occurring in Pat os ferulacea, Lindl., where the first leaf of the Sida Ci 
makes i 
ones and remainder of the bud force themselves out through a rupture 
at the base of the tube (l.c. pp. 574, 575, t. 14. f. 4).—ALEXANDER 
Dickson. 
ScIRPUS TRIQUETER. Ba reference to a note in Mr. Keys’ ‘ Flora of 
on and Cornwall' (p. 280), I have to say, that I found Scirpus 
triqueter, L., in July, 1857, growing most copiously on a mud-bank 
