BOTANY. 233 
draws the conclusion that at a period subsequent to the glacial 
epoch a warmer climate than the present overspread that part of 
Europe, when the species referred to extended over a wide 
area, of which the present isolated localities are the remains.— 
A.W. B. 
Moucry 1N Pants. —In the January number of the London 
“Popular Science Review” Mr. A. W. Bennett brings forward 
Some remarkable illustrations of this singular class of phenomena, 
a which he divides under two heads :—those relating to the whole 
: habit and mode of growth, and those which relate to the develop- 
ment of some particular organ or part. Of the former kind a 
very familiar instance occurs in the extraordinary resemblance 
between the succulent plants which form so prominent a feature 
in the flora of the sandy deserts of America and Africa, belonging 
to the widely dissociated genera Cactus, Euphorbia and Hapelia ; 
and instances of this kind the writer thinks may generally be 
accounted for by similarity of external conditions. Far more’ 
d difficult is it to explain the cases of “mimicry” which come under 
a the second head, in which species growing either in the same or 
$ in different localities, imitate one another to a marvellous degree 
of closeness in the form and venation of the leaf, the external 
appearance of the seed-vessel, or in some other particular organ ; 
and of this kind several illustrative drawings are given. It ap- 
Pears impossible to suggest any explanation of this curious 
Phenomenon like that which has been brought forward in the case 
of similar close resemblances in the animal kingdom, viz., ‘‘ pro- 
tective resemblance” springing up by the operation of natural 
Selection, and these singular facts seem to deserve closer attention 
than they have yet received. Mr. Bennett doubts whether natural 
selection is adequate to account for the growth of organisms of 
this description, and belieyes we must recur to the predarwinian 
doctrine of “design” in nature. — A. W. B. 
NarDosmTA PALMATA. — About four years ago my attention was 
called, by Prof. Albert Hopkins, to a locality in this town where the 
‘ardosmia palmata Hook. is somewhat plentiful. It grows in 
amy open ground ; only a few large trees and some bushes being 
"r, and in the immediate vicinity of a perennial spring of pure 
cold water, What are the New England localities of this rare 
plant? — Sansorn Tenney, Williams College, Mass. 
