44 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
As to its being a transition state, on its way to full whiteness, that is a 
point open to question. I do not know that the flower has ever been 
found white 
Those wie so strongly insist on the relation of vital force to color 
would seem to be sustained in this one fact, that iu almost all white vari- 
€ (white us taken as absence of color) the foliage, stem, sepals, 
,appear to sympathize, and are at least much paler than usual. But 
ine will not ius admitted as conclusive. — HENRY GILLMAN, Detroit, Mich. 
AREAS OF PRESERVATION. — Although distribution is one of the strong- 
est points of the derivative doctrine, yet it is wonderful to see, in the 
light of this sober and impartial survey [ Bentham's address on Geographi- 
cal Biology to the Linnæan Society, 1869], how entirely the whole aspect 
of philosophieal natural history in this regard has changed within two 
decades. **Centres of creation" and the like are of the language of the 
past, here replaced by Bentham's happy term of ** Areas of Preservation." 
And the conclusion tardily reached **that pem present geographical dis- 
tribution of plants was in most instances a derivative one, altered from a 
very different former distribution," has been followed by the sepas. 
that the present species themselves are equally derivative, and ha 
changeful history, some steps in which may be dimly surmised by di 
study of cognate forms, extant or fossil. At the point now reached, if 
not by general yet by large consent, the problems we are led to consider 
are such that it is indispensable to have a term of wider application than 
* species" technically means; and Mr. Bentham here appropriates to this 
use the word Race, to denote either permanent variety (the old meaning 
of the word when definitely restricted), or species, or groups of two or 
more near and so-called representative species, i. e., for those collections 
of seconde Soci or resembling groups of individuals, whose association in 
purely technical word. — A. Gray, in American Journal of Science. 
LEAVES oF CONIFERÆ. — At the meeting of the Philadelphia Academy 
of Natural Sciences on the 5th of January, Thomas Meehan referred to 
his original observations that the so-called leaves of pines were rather 
branchlets than leaves, and that the true leaves existed in the shape of 
scales which were adnate to the stem; and that these adnate leaves were 
iain free or adherent in proportion to the axial vigor of the tree. In 
ome Conifer, the larch being a good illustration, the adherent leaves or 
peas. had the power of producing long foliaceous awns, which ap- 
peared as true leaves. Nothing of this kind had been found in Pinus 
except in the one-year-old or seedling state. He now exhibited a spec- 
imen of Pinus serotina, which had been sent him by Mr. W. H. Ravenel, of 
Aiken, South Carolina, in which foliaceous awns, two inches long, had been 
