NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 241 
ellas in South America), or in the plumage of birds. The agency of in- 
sects has not been traced in the fertilization of grasses, but may exist. 
The little flies I have seen on the flowers of grasses seemed bent on de- 
positing their eggs in the nascent ovaries, but may also have aided in 
cross-fertilization. In the Amazon Valley grasses are often invested by 
ants, who, indeed, leave nothing organic unvisited throughout that vast 
region; and they also, I think, cannot help occasionally transferring 
grains of pollen from one flower to another. 
ers of Palms and Grasses agree in being usually small and 
the thick forest, the sense of hearing would perhaps give the first notice 
of its proximity, from the merry hum of winged insects — its scented 
flowers had drawn together, to feast on the honey, and to transport the 
ers from the grasses seems to show that insect-aid is not needed for ef- 
fecting their — but does not render its accidental concurrence a 
whit less unlikel 
That — “notwithstanding their almost mathematical characters, 
vary much as other plants do, is plain from the multitude of osculating 
forms (in Boc enera as Era E Panicum, and Paspalum), which puz- 
zle the botanist to decide when to combine and when to separate, i order 
g arriages, er 
brought about. If the flowers of grasses be sometimes fertilized in the 
bud, it is probably nepos like the similar cases recorded of Orchids 
and many other familie 
To conclude: the more I ponder over existing evidence, the more I feel 
convinced that in its perfect state every being has the sexes practically _ 
separated, and that natural selection is ever tending to make this separa- 
the prototype even of man was hermaphrodite, may one day be proved to 
e a fact! — Dr. R. Spruce, Scientific — [See his paper in Journ. 
Linn. ae 
r cTs. — Dr. Bail of Danzig, in a recent pamphlet, keen 
iu ee s dis various kinds of fungus that are parasitic upon the larv 
of different insects, and his investigations are of some practical ‘aise 
tance in relation to a possible check to the destruction of forest-trees, 
which goes on to an enormous extent in North Germany, through the 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV. 31 
