1102 The Achenial Hairs of Townsendia.  [November, 
earth’s surface, as well as of long intervals of time, marked by 
great foldings and disturbance, and by vast and wide-spread ero- 
sion of the successive series of rocks. 
In conclusion, the writer took occasion to call attention to the 
important labors of the present school of Italian geologists, and 
their great zeal, skill and disinterested service, as shown in the 
memoirs of the R. Academia dei Lincei, and in the work of the 
Royal Geological Commission, including the special studies, 
maps and memoirs prepared by it for the International Geologi- 
cal Congress of Bologna in 1881. The new Geological Society 
of Italy, founded at the same date, gives promise of a brilliant 
future, and has already published many important memoirs. 
:0: 
THE ACHENIAL HAIRS OF TOWNSENDIA. 
BY PROFESSOR G. MACLOSKIE. 
T genus Townsendia of Hooker, belonging to the Asteroid 
Compositæ, includes about seventeen species, inhabitants of 
the Rocky Mountain region from New Mexico and Colorado to 
Eastern California. They are remarkable for the prostrate, hoary 
habit of most of the species, the linear or spathulate leaves beng 
crowded in rosettes around the rather large flower-heads; , 
hemispherical or broad campanulate involucre consisting of a f" 
series of imbricating lanceolate bracts with scarious lacerate p 
gins; the plane receptacle; the anthers obtuse at the wer 
flattened branches and lanceolate appendages of the styles of ; 
disk-flowers; and most of all for the pappus of the disk-flowe 
consisting of many (fifteen to thirty) stout bristles, thic 
downwards, unequal and scabrid or barbellate. One sr a 
eximia) has the pappus consisting of two chaff-like bristles "n 
from a ring of coalescing scales; and in several species e 2 
pus of the ray-flowers is shorter than in the disk, or o < 
whole or in part of scales. T. wilcoxiana has the papp"$ 5 y 
long and fine upwards, but its bristles are thickened or be et 
low; and in T, spathulata the pappus-bristles are somewhat 
der, but their bases are thickened and coalescing into a file 
that all fall off together. The achenes are flattened w 
angles thickened ; sometimes those of the ray- 
rous; they are narrow-obovate and more or less pud®" 
in T. eximia, where they are broad-ovate and glabrous 
