1879.] | _ Botany. 451 
GENERAL NOTES. 
BOTANY. 
Tue Muruat RELATIONS BETWEEN FLOWERS AND THE INSECTS 
WHICH SERVE TO CROSS THEM.\—In 112 well illustrated octavo 
pages Dr. Miiller has given us a very pleasantly-written account of 
the present state of our knowledge in this department of biology. 
Many of the facts and theories are by no means new, but many 
others appear in print here for the first time. 
The writer shows that botany and zodlogy are more than mere 
“ descriptive natural sciences” as they are even yet called, and 
that not the least of the good resulting from the theory of natu- 
ral selection, advanced by Darwin, is the revival of an interest in 
to them. The probable course of development, from the lowest 
forms of life of those plants which are merely cellular, as the 
Algze, mosses and liverworts, and still further of the vascular 
cryptogams and phzenogams is well traced. 
As regards their means of fertilization, plants are divided into 
two groups: 
. Gymnogame, including all plants which possess naked male _ 
cells capable of independent motion through the water to the 
female cell. This group contains all the sexual cryptogams, and 
is but slightly discussed by Dr. Müller. 
6, Angiogame, including plants whose male cells are enclosed 
in a protecting cell wall, and are carried to the female cell by for- 
eign agency. With this group, containing all the Phanogams, 
the present paper is chiefly concerned. 
As agents for transferring the male cells or pollen of the 
Angiogamz, we find water, wind, and various animals, as is 
1 Die Wechselbexichungen zwischen den Blumen und den ihre Kreuzung vermittelu-— 
den Insekten. HH, MULLER in Schenk’s Handbuch der Botanik. 
ary, 1879, where the figures by which Mr. Darwin proves the value of cross-fertiliza- 
tion, in his book on that subject, are made to show that after the first few generations 
ere is a constant tendency towards eq tality between crossed and self-fertilized off- 
spring, and where many instances of constant self-fertilization are collected. 
