* 
BOTANY. 355 
The appendix by Thos. Ketteringham, on the preparation and 
mounting of objects, is useful to beginners, though somewhat more 
in need of revision than the body of the work. —R. H. W 
BOTANY. 
Sex in Prants.—The remarks of Dr. John Stockton Hough 
on sex in plants (p. 19, American NATURALIST, 1874) are so kind 
and complimentary to me, that only a desire tg aid science, a 
desire I am sure my friend will respect, leads me to offer the fol- 
lowing remarks. 
That Dr. Hough has mistaken my views is clear, from his sug- 
gestion that I should have used the word “development” in my 
papers. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I have endeav- 
ored to show that sex is determined before development begins ; 
and I have used the term vitality or vigor in order to express the 
determining power. In a field so wholly new, as this question 
was when I entered into it, I had great difficulty in finding terms 
to represent the facts properly ; but whenever I have used the 
terms vigor or vitality, I have always explained that I meant by 
them a high or low degree of life whatever that might be. If two 
plants or parts of plants equally ‘‘developed,” were placed under 
the same circumstances as regards nutrition, and one died while 
the other passed through uninjured, this I call a test of vitality. 
In the one case there is a low vital power, in the other a higher ; 
this I have taken as the chief factor in deciding sex, and ‘‘devel- 
opment” has clearly no place in the idea. 
That Dr. Hough has not read my papers very Closely also 
appears froi his quotations. It was I and not Mr. Darwin, who 
recorded the fact that female branches sometimes appeared on 
male silver maples ; and I also gave the account of Mr. Arnold’s 
Toss-experiments, both in the * Proceedings of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences” of Philadelphia, before the dates he refers to. 
These are minor errors to be sure, but they lead to the fear that 
there may be greater ones; and that greater ones do occur is clear 
from his quoting me as saying that, “ In Norway spruces it is only 
in the fourth or fifth year, when vitality in the spur is nearly ex- 
hausted, that male flowers abundantly appear.” I never said any- 
thing of the kind; Norway spruces have no spurs. Again I am 
made to build considerably on the Cupuliferæ in my arguments 
* 
