542 General Notes. [May, 
Wistaria bean, above mentioned, was thrown violently for a dis- 
tance of sixteen feet and rebounded four feet. If it had been 
ejected with the same force from the position in which it grew on 
its native vine, it certainly would have flown for a distance of at 
least thirty feet. At all events, its enclosing pod proved itself to 
be an energetic vegetable catapult.—Rev. J. L. Zabriskie, Nyack, 
NV. Y., March, 188}. 
ADDENDUM TO ARTICLE ON THE Compass PLant (Silphium 
laciniatum).—In the Naturatist for August, 1882, to the list of 
papers on the subject, at the end should be added: 
Tuomas HILL, LL.D.—Proceedings of Am. Ass. for Adv. of Science at Troy, Au- 
gust, 1870, p. 285. 
THOMAS ee aE of Acad. of Natural Sciences Phila. for 1870, pp- 
117-116. 
—do. for 1875, p. 270 i 
—Flowers and Ferns of the U. S., with colored plate of the plant, 2d series, 
1880. 
The extract on page 634 from paper by Francis Darwin m 
Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. xvin, No. 112, 1881, has 
some errors and omissions. It was copied from another jou 
Now that I can copy from the original I give in full his conclu- 
sion of experiments “On the power possessed by leaves t 
placing themselves at right angles to the direction of inciden 
light.” He says, p. 449: “Thus the result of the crpe 
in the ‘Movements of Plants’ fby Charles Darwin, pp. 438- 444) 
that the power which leaves have of placing themselves at nig" 
angles to the incident light, is due toa specialized sensitiventss 
to light, which is able to regulate or govern the action 0 nage 
external forces, such as gravitation, or of internal forces suc 
4 ty.” 
He defines, p. 421, the terms epinasty and hyponasty, oid l 
ployed by De Vries and himself, as follows: “ An organ b or 
to be epinastic when the longitudinal growth of the upper m 
half; ep 
nasty, if unopposed will therefore result in the organ P” erse 
convex aboe and curving downwards.—Hyponasty isthe ae : 
of epinasty, that is to say, the organ curves upwards sits njami a 
lower increasing more than the upper half in length. — a 
Alvord, Washington, D. C. | 
An APICAL CELL IN GymnosperMs.—One by he phaner- 
acters relied upon to distinguish the cryptogams from a in the 
ogams are disappearing. We have long supposed had one 
development of the stems and roots of phanerogams i wing 
one the old chat . 
character which could be considered reliable. ae a 
point (punctum vegetationis) in the cryptogams 1° a ae 
f cells Me 
which by repeated fission gives rise to the mass © 
