ZOOLOGY. 109 
were dead. At this time the plants under the other glasses were 
perfectly healthy and sensitive ; but there was a great inequality 
of development among them. The white had made great progress, 
the red less, the yellow little less still ; the violet and the blue did 
not appear to have grown at all. After sixteen days the vigorous 
plants from the uncolored glass were removed to the green; in 
eight days they had become less sensitive, in two more the sensi- 
tiveness had almost entirely disappeared, and in another week 
they were all dead. Green rays of light appear to have no greater 
influence on vegetation than complete absence of light, and M. 
Bert believes that the sensitive plants exhibit only the same phe- 
nomena as all plants colored green, but to an excessive degree.— 
A B. 
STRUCTURE OF THE CLosep FLOWERS or ImpatreNs.— At a 
meeting of the Linnean Society of London held November 16th, 
Mr. A. W. Bennett read a paper on the above subject, his obser- 
vations, made on Impatiens fulva Nutt., an American species 
completely naturalized in several places in the south of England, 
being substantially in accordance with those recorded by Prof. 
Asa Gray in his ‘‘Genera Flora America boreali-orientalis.” Mr. 
Bennett, however, believes that the closed or ‘“cleistogenous” self- 
fertilized flowers are not the result of “arrested development,” 
but are from the first of a different nature, and he suggests that 
the “cap” formed by the unexpanded calyx and corolla may be 
thrown off the pistil by the elasticity of the stamens, which are of a 
very different shape and structure from those in the perfect flow- 
ers. The anthers do not dehisce, but the pollen, the quantity of 
which is very small, pierces with its tubes the wall of the anther 
in order to reach the stigma. The plant does not appear to be 
visited by insects in England; the conspicuous flowers, in which 
there is a provision to prevent the pollen reaching the stigma con- 
sequently seldom produce op while the unopened flowers do so 
abound invariably.— A. W. 
ZOOLOGY. 
Tue Erarostomomws.— Having been for several years specially 
interested in this little group of Percoids, of which I am now ' 
engaged in completing a monograph. and wishing to secure 
