j8 14/ est A7)ierican Scieiitist. 



AN INSECTIVORO US PLANT. 



A writer in the Popular Science News says that when micros- 

 copically examined, the Silene stems and flowers are found 

 covered with hair-glands, which thickly beset the calyx and 

 upper stems. The glands, on the distal ends of the hairs, are 

 filled with a greenish, yellowish or clear juice of very viscid 

 character. The little round vesicles or glands are inclosed in an 

 exceedingly thin membrane that is easily broken by the touch of 

 insect feet, body and wings. The sticky liquid oozes out, and 

 fastens myriads of gnats and flies in its fatal embrace. Insect 

 feet can be seen toiling in vain to escape; the liquid adheres, is 

 extended in long threads, and, by its elasticity, draws back the 

 unwilling feet lifted to escape After a while the liquid evap- 

 orates to a hard gum ; the insectivorous plant absorbes the juices 

 of its prisoners' bodies, and appropriates them to itself. 



DIMINUTIVE MAIL MATTER. 



The postal service at Liverpool, England, recently had an 

 experience which, if often repeated, would prove the reverse of 

 amusing. Some one whose ingenuity or economy was searching 

 for new fields, wrote a message of twenty -six words on the back 

 of a 2-cent stamp, which was duly posted and delivered. The 

 success led to a second experiment and then a third. But, on the 

 last occasion, a i-cent stamp was chosen, and was accordingly 

 held as an insufficiently prepaid letter. 



NECROLOGY. 



M. Bonley, president of the French Academy of Science, died 

 November 20, 1886. 



M. Rabuteau, for twenty years a member of the French 

 Biological Society, is deceased. 



Captain Mangin, the inventor of a system of optical telegraphy, 

 is dead of apoplexy at the age of 45 years. 



Dr. Thomas Andrews, F. R. S., the well-known professor of 

 chemistry in Queen's College, Belfast, died lately at the age of 71 

 years. 



Carl Oscar Hamnstrom, a Swedish bo'anist, died on July 5, 

 1886, at Hessleholm, Sweden, aged 70. 



Florida is following Louisiana in the attempt to make money 

 out of the Ricinus communis. A firm in that State is preparing 

 320 acres to be planted in castor beans, and next year an oil mill 

 will be erected. 



