32 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



tcata. It was discovered in Oregon by Thomas Howell about 

 thirty years ago. The flowers are clear, bright yellow with 

 brownish purple or red veins on the sepals. Since yellow- 

 flowered species are not common in the genus, the present spe- 

 cies ought to be valuable as a starting point for other interest- 

 ing forms. 



Sense of Smell in Insects. — It would be impossible 

 for anyone to say just how well the sense of smell serves the 

 denizens of the insect world, but if the author of a paper re- 

 cently presented before the American Society of Zoologists is 

 correct, the perception of odors by the insects must be rather 

 keen. Unlike the higher animals, the olfactory organs of the 

 insects are located on various parts of the body, even on the 

 legs and wings. It is reported that some butterflies and moths 

 have from 500 to 1,300 olfactory pores, the moths usually hav- 

 ing the larger numbers. Most of these pores are located on 

 the wings. If they serve as so many individual noses, as they 

 apparently do, the life of the insect must be largely dominated 

 by odors. It would be absurd to assume that because we can- 

 not detect odor in a flower that it is equally odorless to the bee 

 or moth. It is quite within the range of possibility that many 

 of the odors we are able toi detect fail to register on the insect 

 sense organs and vice z'crsa. At any rate, an insect with 1,300 

 olfactory pores seems pretty well equipped for appreciating the 

 odor oi a flower if it has any. 



New Forms of Lily. — The differences in color presented 

 by the flowers of the meadow lily {Liliuin Canadcnsc) have 

 long been a matter for speculation. In New England and 

 other parts oi the Atlantic Seaboard, the flowers are orange 

 yellow; further west they are deep red. Up to the present, 

 however, botanists have regarded one form as a mere color 

 variation of the other, but Prof. O, A. Farwell considers the 

 western form distinct enough to be reg^arded as a species and 

 recently named it Liliuin Michigancnsc. Since the color of the 



