NOTES AND LITERATURE. 
BOTANY. 
Recent Literature on Germination.— The germination of the seed 
of Carapa guianensis Aubl. is described by Harshberger in Proceed- 
ings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. LIV 
(1902), pp. 122-125, Pl. VIII. The seeds are without endosperm, 
the reserve material of the cotyledons being oil, proteid bodies, and 
protoplasm. The seeds would seem to lose their vitality more or 
less quickly ; the period of germination is gone through quite rapidly, 
the plants reaching a height of about a foot and having produced 
several well-developed pinnate leaves in a month's time. They start 
to germinate before falling out of the capsule; all may germinate 7z 
situ and soon be so closely bound together by the intricately woven 
mass of secondary roots that it is hard to separate them. The ger- 
mination of Carapa guianensis and Xylocarpus granatum (= Corapa 
maluccensis) is somewhat similar, the greatest difference being the 
formation of a tuber-like radicle and pneumatodes in C. ma/uccensis, 
a tree of mangrove habit. 
Elenora Armitage finds (Mew Phytologist, Vol. I (June, 1902), 
pp. 127—128), that seeds of Euphorbia peplus germinate after being 
kept in a dry place for nearly nine years. She further shows that 
the seeds of this species, an annual, will germinate as soon as sown. 
The results are of interest in comparison with those of Winkler 
(Berichte der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft, Vol. T), who found 
that seeds of Euphorbia cyparissias, a perennial, germinated first 
from four to seven years after they ripened, and those of Æ. exigua, 
an annual, nine years after ripening. She suggests that the so-called 
resting period is usually a delay due to the presence of a hard testa 
which requires moistening. It may be mentioned here that the seeds 
of Nelumbium luteum, for example, germinate at once when an open- 
ing is filed in the hard shell, but only after long delay when this is 
left intact. 
In the Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. XXXV (July, 1902), 
pp. 396—402, Prof. John Percival considers the origin of calcium 
oxalate crystals in seedlings of Z+ifolium hybridum Linn., giving the 
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