MISCELLANY. 



761 



the consumption of beer is steadily increas- 

 ing in spite of the advance in prices, and he 

 is convinced that this state of things will 

 continue, no matter what weight of argu- 

 ment may be brought against it. " Condi- 

 ments of this kind," says he, " are often, no 

 doubt, the occasion of real waste, but yet 

 the majority of mankind can always, to their 

 great profit, find, by observation and self- 

 control, the proper amount of them to con- 

 sume " 



Sensation and Motion in Plants. — Treat- 

 ing of the vital phenomena which are com- 

 mon to plants and animals, the eminent 

 French physiologist, Claude Bernard, ob- 

 serves that Linnaeus's criterion of animal- 

 ity, viz., sensibility and mobility, is not in 

 accord with facts. There are many plant- 

 forms on the boundary between the animal 

 and the vegetable worlds, for instance, the 

 zoospores of the algae, which have the pow- 

 er of motion. Then the antherozoids, par- 

 ticularly the cedogonium, studied by Prings- 

 heim, manifest the faculty not only of mo- 

 tion in general, but even of motion toward 

 a definite object — in other words, show all 

 the appearances of voluntary movement. 

 As instances of mobility in plants, the au- 

 thor further cites the movements of the 

 stamina of the Berberis (barberry), the Dro- 

 sera, the Dionoea muscipula (fly-catcher), and 

 the oscillating sainfoin (Hedysarum gyrans). 



Sensibility too is found in several plants. 

 The Mimosa pudica (sensitive-plant) is the 

 most prominent instance of this. This 

 plant reacts against any irritation by fold- 

 ing up its leaves, which again are spread 

 out soon after the exciting cause is removed. 

 It is a curious circumstance that most of 

 the agents which excite sensibility in ani- 

 mals have a like effect on the mimosa : thus 

 it is affected by sudden shock, by burning, 

 by the action of caustic, by electrical dis- 

 charges, etc. Nay, the same agents, such 

 as chloroform and ether, which deaden sen- 

 sibility, or assuage pain in animals, destroy 

 the mimosa's power of reaction. Vegetal 

 anaesthesia is produced by the same means 

 as animal anaesthesia. 



There are other plants besides the Mi- 

 mosa pudica which manifest this curious 

 property of reacting against irritation, for 

 instance, the leguminosae of the genera 



Smithia, aeschynomcne, dcsmanthus, Jiohinia 



pscudacacia, and the Oscalis scnsitiva of 



India. From all this it follows that the 



power of movement and sensibility are 



functional properties which cannot strictly 



serve as a distinction between the vegetable 



and animal worlds. 



4 



Is Sex determined by Nutrition ? — Mr. 



Thomas Meehan exhibited to the Philadel- 

 phia Academy of Natural Sciences speci- 

 mens of the Juglans nigra (black walnut), 

 with a view to showing that sex in plants is 

 the result of the grade of nutrition, the 

 highest grades of nutrition or vitality pro- 

 ducing the female sex, and the lower grades 

 the male. Examining a black-walnut tree 

 at the flowering season, even the superficial 

 observer will perceive three grades of grow- 

 ing buds. The largest buds make the most 

 vigorous shoots. These seem to be wholly 

 devoted to the increase of the woody system 

 of the tree. Lower down the strong last- 

 year shoots are buds not quite so large. 

 These make shoots less vigorous than the 

 other class, and bear female flowers on their 

 apices. Below these are seen numerous 

 small, weak buds, which either do not push 

 into growth at all, or, when they do, bear 

 simply the male catkins. As some natural- 

 ists hold that the feeble condition of these 

 lower shoots is the result of their bearing 

 male flowers, Mr. Meehan invited attention 

 to the specimens themselves as conclusively 

 proving the contrary. He was fully satis- 

 fied that any one, who would go out into the 

 woods and fields for facts fresh from Nature, 

 would see that there is not so great expen- 

 diture of vital force in the production of 

 male flowers as there is in that of female 

 flowers, and thus all he had advanced on 

 this subject was fully sustained. 



It will be remembered that, in our June 

 number, we recounted the observations of 

 Mrs. Mary Treat on the subject of controlling 

 sex in butterflies, from which it appeared 

 that butterfly-larvae developed into male or 

 female butterflies according as they were 

 stinted in food, or liberally supplied with it. 

 Besides the very interesting observations of 

 Mr. Meehan, we have now further confirma 

 tion of Mrs. Treat's results in a paper com- 

 municated to the Philadelphia Academy by 

 Mr. Gentry. The latter author, in the sum- 



