1876.] Burs in the Borage Family. 3 
as they spread in all directions, the whole, if caught in the hairy 
coat of passing animals, is likely to act as å sort of four-seeded 
bur; the bur here being a fruiting calyx instead of a quarter- 
section of pericarp. The bristles being straight and smooth, their 
hold is precarious. We know of no species in which they become 
hooked. But just that occurs, on a small scale, in nearly half the 
species of the related genus Myosotis, mouse-ear or forget-me-not ; 
that is, the stronger bristles on the calyx are neatly hooked at the 
tip, and so a sort of bur is formed. It would be more effective if 
the fruit-bearing calyx disarticulated more readily from its pedicel. 
This brings us to the new genus already referred to. It is an 
insignificant little plant in appearance, recently found by Dr. Ed- 
ward Palmer upon Guadalupe Island, off Lower California. The 
specimens were mixed with those of a Pectocarya (native to Cali- 
fornia and Chili), which in aspect they much resemble. But in 
Pectocarya the four-lobed and four-rayed fruit is itself a bur, 
‘grappling by a fringe of marginal bristles or slender teeth with 
hooked tips. But in our new plant, which I have named Harpa- 
gonella, the nutlets or seeming seeds are perfectly smooth. There 
is in the flower the ordinary provision for four of them ; but two 
of the lobes on one side seem to be abortive from the first, while 
the other two grow to an unusual size, compared to that of the 
blossom. As they enlarge, so does the calyx on that side of the 
flower, but not on the other. The two conjoined calyx-leaves of 
that side, united by their contiguous edges almost to the tip, as 
- they increase in size soon begin to fold around one or the other 
of the growing nutlets, — it seems indifferent which, — leaving 
the other one “ out in the cold,” forming a sort of husk which 
incloses it completely, and then develops from the outside five or 
six long and narrow finger-like processes, and along the length of 
these forms a set of -hook-tipped bristles, thus producing a most 
effective bur. 
As to the other seed, it apparently starts as fairas its preferred 
twin-companion, and sometimes it grows to almost the same size 
and matures its embryo, but more commonly it fails to mature. 
This is a curious case of * natural selection,” and a sacrificing 
of three for the greater advantage of one. For an advantage we 
must presume it to be, or to have been, to be thus protected and 
provided with means of transport; else, under any view, it would 
not have come to pass. Moreover, this is a sort of case which is 
comparatively intelligible under the supposition that it has come 
to pass in the course of time and the course of nature ; while the 
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