SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. | Te 
highland districts, are not found also in natural habitats in subalpine and 
lowland tracts ?" On this point I do not think that it will be necessary 
to wait seven years for an answer, which, not to enter into minute details, 
or oceupy too m oak space, may briefly be stated on bio-geological grounds 
as follows :—In all their native habitats, whether on the loftier or lower 
mountains, they are to be regarded as strictly Rr yea plants, still 
urishing on the old insular sea-rocks, and not carried away by subse- 
quent denudation.. This, I think, sufficiently explains the su 3 Ms 
anomaly, and answers Canon Kingsley’ s question. A much more difficult 
question, and one closely connected with the present, is, whether the 
different peades presented by these plants in their montane and mari- 
time habitats, depend entirely upon difference in temperature, elevation, 
etc., or upon difference in origin, the e arré having been introduced from 
a north, and the latter from a south direction. is, however, is a sub- 
much to be desired that botanists would turn their attention more parti- 
cularly to the very interesting study of phyto-geology, and record the 
results of a ee from time to time in this Journal.—JAMEs 
M. CROMB 
FERTILIZATION OF THE HazEL.—Three years ago I stated my belief 
that the Hazel is as nearly self-fertilized as it is possible for a unisexual 
plant to be ; i.e. that the female flowers are fertilized from male flow 
in close proximity to them. Other botanists had combated this idea on 
the ground that the male and female flowers are not matured on the same 
bough at the same time. Ihave this year repeated my observations, and 
with the same result as before. The enclosed twig, gathered in Oxford- 
shire on February 3rd, will, I hope, reach p in sufficiently good con- 
y to 
them. My theory of the fertilization of winter-flowering plants is not that 
cross-fertilization is impossible | with them, but that they are By Sion con- 
sso cont thet rapa as a rule, and that where ies, 
ordinarily flowering in the spring or summer, prolonge its period of doveri 
ing into the winter, the structure or arrangement of the male and female 
organs may even be specially modified for thie purpose, as observed by 
myself in Stellaria and by pe ae in Geranium. The Hazel I take to 
be a true winter-floweri ring plant, producing its male and female flowers in 
_January and February, inept of the temperature or the forwardness 
or backwardness of the season. en its period of flowering is prolonged 
into March, I should ae be surprised to find that the later female flowers 
depend for their impregnation on pollen brought from a distance. ‘The 
Willows, as pointed out by Dr. “a er Rida are spring, not 
winter-flowering, plants.—ALFRED W. Benn 
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