204 General Notes. [ March, 
adhere to it, where they discharge their pollen before withering. 
The four short stamens grow only about half way to the stigma. 
_ At no stage of their growth could he find them any longer. Both 
- sets of stamens discharge their pollen at the same time. The short 
re oY 
stamens are attached to the base of the petals and when the 
flowers close, the petals coming together draw the anthers of the 
short stamens up to the base of the stigmas. Occasionally a 
small green bee came to the flowers, but they all left at once, as 
though they had made a mistake. He tied up buds before they 
were open, and found that the flowers all set seeds freely. 
Mr. C. H. Osband finds that the sensitive stigmas of the flow- 
ers of trumpet-creepers close in about three seconds after being 
touched and open in five minutes. Both insects and humming 
birds aid in fertilization. 
THE FUNCTION OF CHLOROPHYLL.—One of the most important 
recent contributions to physiological botany, is contained in a 
recent communication to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, by Dr. 
Pringsheim, which appears to throw considerable fresh light on 
the function of chlorophyll in the life of the plant. 
Having been led by previous researches to the conclusion that 
important results might be obtained by the use of intense light, he 
combined an apparatus by which the object under view should be 
brightly and constantly illuminated by a strong lens and a helio- 
stat. If in this way an object containing chlorophyll—a moss- 
leaf, fern-prothalium, chara, conferva, or thin section of a leaf of a 
phanerogam—be observed, it is seen that great charges are pro- 
duced in a period varying from three to six or more minutes. 
The first and most striking result is the complete decomposi- 
tion of the chlorophyll, so that in a few minutes the object appears 
as if it had been lying for some days in strong alcohol. Although 
however, the green color has disappeared, the corpuscles retain 
- their structure essentially unaltered. The change then gradual- 
ly extends to the other constituents of the cell; the circulation of 
the protoplasm is arrested; the threads of protoplasm are ruptured 
and the nucleus displaced; the primordial utricle contracts and 
becomes permeable to coloring matters; the turgidity of the cell 
ceases ; and the cell presents, in short, all the phenomena of death. 
That these effects are not due to the action of the high tempera- 
ture to which the cell is exposed under these circumstances 1$ 
shown by the fact that they are produced by all the different parts 
of the visible spectrum. The result is the same whether the light 
has previously passed through a red solution of iodine in carbon 
bisulphide, through a blue ammoniacal solution of cupric oxide, or 
through a green solution of cupric chloride. If the carbon disul- 
phide solution of iodine be so concentrated that only rays of a 
greater wave-length:than 0.00061 mm. can pass through it, these _ 
effects are not produced, although about eighty per cent. of the _ 
heat of white sunlight is transmitted. On the other hand, if the 
