112 MEETINGS. 



near Sausmarez Manor, at the Catel. "The bird took the 

 egg up in her beak and flew with it to a small white thorn 

 bush, where after some searching I discovered a hedge- 

 sparrow's nest containing the newly deposited egg. It differed 

 only in being slightly larger and of a duller colour than those 

 already in the nest." 



Owing to a press of other matter the discussion of this 

 paper was postponed till the next meeting. 



Mr. T. C. Royle made the following suggestive remarks 

 on the subject of " The Glandular Hairs of Plants." He 

 called attention to a recent article by Mr. Weyman in Science 

 Gossip on viscidity in Stellaria aquatica (Water mouse-ear 

 chick-weed) putting forward the view that viscidity (which 

 is usually accompanied by glandular pubescence), has been 

 developed in plants generally as a protection against drought 

 by preventing the undue evaporation of moisture from their 

 stems, &c, by the heat of the sun. He agreed with the 

 author that the subject of viscidity had been somewhat 

 neglected, but said that it was unsafe to decide from such 

 narrow premises, and that glandular, hairy, and viscid species 

 must be studied as a group in order to come to any satis- 

 factory conclusion, and as an illustration submitted the 

 following considerations, which might, possibly, after further 

 investigation lead to a different conclusion from that given 

 above. 



The theory of development implies that species vary 

 with the changes in their environment, and when they so 

 vary and new species are developed, the parent species must 

 linger on growing side by side with its descendants, in many 

 cases for a very long period, before becoming finally extinct. 

 We must, therefore, have with us now many species which 

 have long ago passed through their highest stage of develop- 

 ment, and are now slowly dying out. 



In our British flora we find glandular hairs in a highly 

 specialised form only in the Droseras (Sundews). In this 

 insectivorous genus they take the form of long glass-like 

 prehensile hairs which fringe the leaves, and when an unlucky 

 insect alights on the sticky surface of the latter, slowly bend 

 over and hold it there, pressing it into the leaf until it is 

 finally absorbed and assimilated by the plant. In S. aquatica 

 they occur in the much simpler form of short hairs each 

 tipped with a spherical gland. 



Plants with glandular hairs are not, as a rule, dominant 

 species. S. aquatica itself occupies a place apparently 

 between two thriving and ubiquitous genera, Oerastmm and 



