Botany and Zoology. 81 
from the Chino-Himalayan region. He records some interesting 
details respecting the cultivation and the constitutional disposi- 
tion of various species; he finds it “an important point in the 
culture of delicate lilies, that the ground in which they are planted 
should be already occupied by the roots of shrubs or plants which, 
without overgrowing the lilies entirely, will have the effect of 
keeping the soil drier and more open”; he confirms what he had 
said “as to the extreme difficulty of raising hybrid lilies from 
seed,” and, in view of the insufficiency of dried specimens in such 
plants, and the remarkable differences in the bulbs which he has 
pointed out, he impresses the importance of studying them in life. 
This he has done above all others. 
Mr. Lynch, the curator of the Botanic Garden of Cambridge 
University, ina brief paper with some figures, explains the method 
of cultivating aquatic plants, such as water-lilies, which he has 
made so successful. 
Baillon has an interesting memoir on what he terms ovaires 
acropylées, namely ovaries open at the top at the time of fecunda- 
tion, and which are or may be fecundated either directly by 
the deposit of pollen upon the projecting or imperfectly enclosed 
nucleus of the ovule, as he shows in certain cases in Rheum, or 
by the growth of pollen-tubes down a pervious passage through 
the ovarian walls widely distant from the stigmas, as in Pass¢flora. 
The borders of the orifice at the apex of the ovary, between the 
reflexed styles, in Passiflora ccerulea, appear to excite the growth 
of pollen-tubes even more readily than the stigmas themselves. 
For the difficulty of fecundating this species is well known; 
but Baillon now tells us that the French gardeners have long 
known how to do it, by application of the pollen to the top of the 
ovary between the bases of the styles! Baillon says that there 
are many other angiospermous plants with open ovary. Those 
systematists—just now in the majority—who relegate the Gym- 
nosperms to a position far away from the other Dicotyledons, 
should compare all this with the structure and fecundation of 
Gnetacew, and reconsider. 
The essay by Timarizeff on the function of chlorophyll was 
some time ago noticed in this Journal. So, also the paper of 
Maximowicz upon the vegetation of Mongolia and northern Tibet 
in the light of recent collections by Russian explorers. 
A second communication by Mr. Lynch should not be over- 
looked. It is upon the tubers of Thladiantha dubia, which look like 
small potatoes, and by which this rather pretty cucurbitaceous 
plant propagates in the gardens freely, not to say exclusively, for 
the female sex is rarely seen. We took it for granted that these 
were true tubers, but Mr. Lynch shows that they are thickenings 
of roots, that they form even on the primordial root of the seed- 
ling, as well as upon secondary fibrous roots, and that the sprouts 
are adventitious buds. Mr. Lynch says that all the seeds he has re- 
ceived and raised gave rise to male plants, and that the female is 
unknown in England. We have had both in cultivation, but the 
Am. Jour. Sct.—THtIrD SERIES, Vou. XX XIII, No. 193.—January, 1887. 
5a 
