BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 87 
to find anything new to record; we make no apology, therefore, for 
transferring these “reminiscences” to our pages, confident that 
they will be as new to our readers as they were to ourselves. The 
story, it must be owned, bears a curious resemblance to the well- 
known anecdote about Angraecum sesquipedale, and it is not easy to 
imagine a “deeply recessed” tulip with a “long floral tube.” 
Perhaps, should this reach his eye, the writer will, when next 
visiting the Entomological Department of the British Museum, 
with which he is evidently well acquainted, bring a specimen to the 
Botanical Department, where it will be welcomed as a novelty. The 
paragraph runs as follows :— 
‘‘ Who that knew of Charles Darwin's constant visits to the a 
aving a proboscis of anything like the length necessary for the 
es : a te one; 80, oath the remark that 
‘it must be at least 94 inches long,’ he set himself, with one of the 
officials, to unravel the probosces of likely insects. A great triumph! 
—at last one of the sphinges was found in the possession of a 
suctorical [sic] organ of precisely the length desired. Moreover, if 
my memory serves, the insect was tabulated as coming from t 
very locality where the tulip had been found. At any rate, the 
facts tallied so precisely that Darwin deemed the matter proved. 
But, alas! for the shortcomings of human reason. It has since 
been ascertained that the fertilisation of that particular tulip is 
effected by a certain bee, which, when it has a difficulty in crawling 
down the long floral tube, bites its way in at the base 
appearance on Jan. 28. It contains twenty-four pages, without 
illustrations, and costs 1s. 6d.; subscribers, however, will receive 
© ten numbers forming the year’s issue for 10s. The principal 
Contribution is the first part of a revision of the classification of the 
Green Algw, by Messrs. F. F. Blackman and A. G. Tansley. 
Dr. Renpir’s monograph of the Naiadacee, a recent instalment 
of Das Pflanzenreich, brings into a convenient form his researches 
