1879. | Botany. 779 
twisted, but not always. The vines are quite slender, and often 
reach off from their support to a great length. One branch 
reached four feet and six inches, nearly in a horizontal position ; 
which reached out twenty inches, passed over a sixth of the cir- 
cumference in three-quarters of an hour. Sometimes the vines 
can almost be seen to move. They appear to move most rapidly 
in the hottest part of the hottest days. 
Mr. T. F. Millspaugh experimented with wild cucumber (Zchi- 
nocystis lobata). He trained a plant on a straight upright stake. 
The vine grew erect until it was about fifteen inches above the 
stake, and then bent over at about an angle of 45 degrees. It see: 
ually ‘dropped to a horizontal position and grew four feet and nine 
inches beyond the stake. Then it turned, and began to grow 
back on itself down to the stake. Here it neither went up nor 
down, as we should suppose, but grew right on the other side of 
the tip of the stake, till, at the time of writing, it had gone twenty 
inches. Before the vine doubled back on itself it described a 
complete circle in one hour and forty-five minutes. It went fast- 
est on one hot day, between one and three o’clock. Tendrils 
were made to coil by irritation of various objects. He examined 
fifty specimens of tendrils which had made coils. It is well 
they turn in one direction for a part of their course, and then turn 
in the opposite direction. In one tendril there were seven of these 
changes in direction; in two there were six changes; in six 
there were five; in eleven there were four; in twenty-three there 
were three; in five there were two, and in two there was one 
change 
BoranicaL News.—The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 
for July and August, contains interesting notes of a botanical ex- 
cursion into North Carolina, by J. H. Redfield, to which Prof. 
Gray contributes foot-notes. The discovery of Epipactis hellebor- 
ine, var. viridans Sim., in the vicinity of Syracuse, N. Y., by Mrs. 
Church, a member of the Syracuse Botanical Club, is recorded. 
To the September number Mr. C. F. Austin contributes some 
bryological notes. In the Botanical Gazette for October, Prof. 
Gray draws attention to Poisson’s account of the beheading of 
flies by Mentzelia ornata, the victims being caught in the barbs o 
this plant. The flies, attracted by the viscid matter in certain of 
the bristles, “thrust in their proboscis between the thickly set 
glochidiate bristles to feed upon the secretion of the glands be- 
_ tween and below. The retrorse barbs interpose no obstacle to 
this; but when the proboscis is withdrawn, its dilated and cush- | 
ion-like tip catches in the barbs, and holds all fast. The harder — 
VOL. XHI.—NO. XII 52 
