1877.] Botany. | 561 
De i Husene skadeligste Insekter og Midder, der angribe og bedcerve vore Madvarer, 
Kleder, Bohave og svrige Eiendele under Tag. Af W. M. Schoyen. Kristiania, 
1876. 12mo, pp. 102. 3 plates. 
Enumeratio Insectorum. Norvegicorum. Fasciculum III. Catalogum Lepidopte- 
rorum Continentem. Auctore H. Siebke defuncto, edidit J. Sparre Schneider. Chris- 
tiania, 1876. 8vo, pp. 188. 
Enumeratio Insectorum Norvegicorum. Fasciculum IV. Catalogum Dipterorum 
Continentem. Auctore H. Siebke defuncto, edidit J. Sparre Schneider. Christiania, 
1877. 8vo, pp. 255. 
Some Remarkable Gravel Ridges in the Merrimac Valley. (Abstract.) By 
George F. Wright. (From the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory, vol. xix. 
I. On the Brains of some Fish-Like Vertebrates. II. On the Serrated Append- 
ages of the Throat of Amia, III. On the Tail of Amia. By Burt G. Wilder. 1876. 
8vo, pp. 10, with a plate. (From the Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Buffalo Meeting, 
August, 1876.) ` 
GENERAL NOTES. 
BOTANY.: b 
VioLeTS. — Most of our readers are aware that many species of violets 
have, in summer, flowers which are totally unlike the showy, attractive 
blossoms of early spring; for instance, the lance-leaved violet and the 
atrow-leaved violet bear late, inconspicuous flowers, in which the petals 
are reduced to the merest rudiments, and only two or three stamens with 
pollen are present. Flowers of this sort have long been known, but 
they need to be more carefully examined with reference to their specific 
peculiarities. It is proposed to give in this note a preliminary sketch of 
the literature of the subject, in the hope that some of our botanists. 
may collect and study the forms here referred to. Dillenius, in 1732, 
(Hort. Eltham, 408) observed that Viola mirabilis has flowers of two 
kinds: the spring flowers, with well-developed corolla and stamens 
seldom produce fruit, but the later flowers, in which he found stamens 
and no petals, always do. Linnæus (Semina Muscorum Detecta, 1732) 
refers to Viola mirabilis as one of the plants which had been thought to 
bear fruit without any antecedent blossoms; but he states that in the 
fase of this plant, as in others referred to, blossoms with good stamens 
and pistils are ‘present. It is said by Dt. Oliver that in a later work 
Linnzeus remarks of Viola mirabilis that “ the early flowers provided with 
a corolla are often barren, while others, appearing subsequently, and 
destitute of a corolla, are fertile.” 
Conrad Sprengel (1793) refers to Viola mirabilis as bearing two kinds 
me but states that he had not had an opportunity of examining 
plant. 
In 1823, De Gingins, in his Mémoire sur la Famille des Violacées, page 
U, writes that « most of the species of the section of violets properly so- 
have the singular property of sometimes producing incomplete 
1 Conducted by Pror. G. L. GOODALE. 
VoL. X1. — No, 9. 36 
