240 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY 
flowers are very numerous, as in Zea Mays, or the stamens are multiplied 
in each male flower, as in Pariana, Leersia, Guadua, etc.; orthe stigmatic 
apparatus of the female flowers ? LM So as almost to insure im- 
n the Bambusesz I have ga itera: belonging to the genera Guadua, 
Merostachys, and Chusquea, the flow re more or less polygamous, 
a genus in the whole order which is not described as having some flowers 
by abortion, neuter or male, and especially those that have biflorous 
ow such as the Panices. Some grasses, of normally hermaphro- 
orus (Nees), a grass peculiar to the Amazon, quite destitute of stamens, 
and therefore purely female. i 
To come home to our own country: Is all the pollen wasted that a 
touch or a breath sets free from the flowers of grasses in such abundance? 
Watch a field of wheat in bloom, the heads swayed by the wind, lovingly 
a 
too, that throughout Nature, heat or moisture, or both, are essential to 
truded from the side or from the base of the flower at an early stage, 
often before the stamens of the same flower are mature — thus as it were 
inviting cross fertilization from the more precocious stamens if other 
pente bsp are already shedding their pollen 
ve gathered grasses will have aukið that some have yel- 
low ena others pink or violet anthers; and that anthers of both 
types of color may co-exist on distinct a aaa of the same species. 
The same peculiarity is just as noticeable in tropical grasses, and (with- 
= 
when distended with mature pollen the yellow color of the latter is alone 
made without any reference to the question now in hand, require to 
be renewed and tested: and in them, as in all that precedes, I am open 
to correction. 
am grasses with bisexual flowers, there are two ways in which the 
e fertilized, namely, either by pt pollen of its own flower 
pant or open), or by that of other flowers, after the manner of the de- 
pean ged dya In the latter case, the pollen may be transported by the 
the fur of animals (as I have observed the seeds of Selagin- 
