888 General Notes. [September, 
their natural state both stafhnens and style are included by the 
keel and lie along the lower portion of the dilated part of the 
keel (Fig. 4). 
When a bee visits the flower it alights upon the wings on the 
left side of the keel. In its struggles to get at the honey, it 
pushes down the wings, these carry with them the keel, and their 
combined motion forces out the hairy end of the style, while the 
peculiar curvature of the keel directs its stigma to the side and 
back of the bee (Figs.5 and 1). In this act the stamens and 
style are in reality passive. They lie at first along the bottom of 
the keel, the depression of the keel pulls it away from the sta- 
mens and draws its tube down from the style, the small opening 
at its end forbidding the extrusion of the stamens. The pollen 
collected on the hairs of the style is left on the back of the bee 
and the stigma receives fresh pollen from some other flower 
which had been left on the back of the insect during some pre- 
vious visit. As soon as the bee leaves the flower the parts again 
resume their normal position. The mechanism of the flower is 
similar to that of h. vulgaris, but lacks the double spiral of the 
keel.— Aug. F. Foerste, Granville, Ohio, 
THE Movement OF PROTOPLASM IN THE STYLES OF INDIAN 
Corn.—It will not be too late when this appears in print for stu- 
dents in botanical laboratories to study the movement of the 
protoplasm in the long styles (“silks”) of the Indian corn. By 
ing a young style from an ear which has been kept in a warm 
place for an hour or so, clipping off a piece a couple of inches in 
length and carefully mounting it in water under a large cover- 
glass, there will be no difficulty in seeing a great deal of activity 
in the protoplasm. Care must of course be taken to have the 
style lie flat, remembering that it is not cylindrical in shape, but 
somewhat ribbon-shaped. The cells are much elongated and the 
walls are so transparent that with careful focusing their contents 
may be seen, even in the interior parts of the style. 
The protoplasm is sufficiently granular to be easily seen. It 
moves along the side of the cell in a strong steady stream, occa- 
sionally heaping up a great mass, which is eventually pushed on- 
ward by the current. As an easily obtained and instructive ex- 
ample of protoplasmic activity I know of nothing which is supe- 
rior to such a specimen.— Charles E. Bessey. 
oS BACTERIA AS VEGETABLE PaRasiTes——The only genuine in- 
= Stance of parasitic bacteria in plants yet mentioned in the books 
_ (De Bary, Zopf, etc.) is that of the yellow sickness of hyacinths, 
_ first described by Dr. Wakker, of Amsterdam, in 1882. This 
bacterium winters in the bulb scales, and increases in the spring 
_to slimy yellow masses which destroy the tissues and eventually 
kill the plant. The priority of demonstrating parasitic bacteria in 
Plants belongs, however, to an American. In 1880, two years 
