1877.] Goneri dots. 803 
GENERAL NOTES. 
BOTANY:.! 
' CRoss-FERTILIZATION OF ARISTOLOCHIA. — Mr. H. G. Hubbard, 
now traveling in Jamaica, has communicated to a Western paper some 
interesting notes on the natural history of the island. His observa- 
tions on Aristolochia are fully confirmatory of the studies of others in 
the case of Aristolochia clematitis. “I have had an opportunity of ex- 
amining the flowers of Aristolochia grandiflora, the ‘ Dutchman’s pipe,’ 
called here the ‘John Crow, or ‘ carrion flower, from the putrid stench 
which it exhales. This flower is one of the largest known. ‘The tube 
or bowl, about a foot long as it hangs from the vines, makes a very good 
imitation of the Dutchman’s china pipe, but the mouth of the bowl turns 
forward and expands eight or ten inches in diameter, and from the lower 
edge of this dangles a slender tail, about a foot long. The whole flower 
is spotted green and purple, like a diseased liver. Notwithstanding its 
vile odor and uncanny look, it is the most interesting of flowers. The 
tube is divided into three chambers by constrictions and valves furnished 
with backward-pointing bristles, the whole forming a trebly guarded fly- 
trap. The outer chamber alone gives out the carrion odor, attracted by 
which, insects enter, and finding themselves deceived try to escape, but 
the long, recurved bristles which line the walls entangle them when they 
turn back, but favor their progress through the second trap and into the 
second chamber beyond. Finally they find their way through the third 
and last trap, into the third chamber. And here you will find small 
flies and beetles by dozens, if you open the blooming flowers. Now 
what is the object of this evident contrivance? The flower is not in- 
sectivorous. The entrapped insects are always found alive and in good 
condition, no dead ones in any of the chambers. In fact, the last one, 
which they must eventually reach, and which also contains the floral 
organs, seems to have been especially contrived for their comfort and 
convenience. It is spacious, unencumbered with bristles, except just 
about the entrance, where a perfect forest of them renders escape into 
the preceding chamber impossible, and moreover about the floral organs 
an abundance of nectar supplies them with food. There is a fine stum- 
bling-block in the way of the believer in the laws of cross-fertilization. 
As Professor Gray would say, this plant seems to be formed on the 
„Plan of ‘how not to do it? Skeptics have pointed triumphantly to the 
Aristolochia as a plant which, with the utmost ingenuity, has provided 
for inString self or close fertilization. They had opened flowers in full 
bloom, found the anthers pouring forth pollen, and the imprisoned in- — 
sects skipping about the inner chamber completely dusting themselves 
and its walls with the yellow grains. The stigmatic surface, too, had 
long been fertilized, its lobes had closed, and having performed its office 
s 1 Conducted by Pror. G. L. GOODALE. ; 
