74 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
lude in passing to the great importance to horticulture of these ex- 
periments. An entirely new aspect is opening up before us, from 
which the horticulture oi the not distant future must necessarily 
benefit. — Ga/rdener's Chronicle. 
A GIGANTIC GRASS SEED. 
At the meeting of the Linnean Society on 20th March, Dr. Otto 
Stapf exhibited several seeds of Melocanna bambusoides, a species 
of bamboo, which completely upset the popular idea of grass seed 
dimensions, the giants of which are presumed to be represented by 
pedigree wheat and maize, in which latter the huge mass of seeds 
constitutes, it is true, a very substantial fruitage; the actual seeds,, 
however, are comparatively small. In Meiocannu, on the other 
hand, in lieu of a spike arm or cylindrical mass of associated small 
seeds, we have solitary ones, measuring no' less than 5 inches in 
height, by 3 in diameter, a massive pear-shaped body, the size and 
form of which are as utterly different from our usual idea of a 
grass seed as can well be conceived. By what evolutionary process 
this huge solitary fruit has been arrived at, is not clear, but as might 
be expected, the great store of nutriment embodied is so large a 
fruit, favours the development of the associated embryo plant to 
such an extent, that the first product of germination is a robust 
growth, which practically secures establishment and continued ex- 
istence. The single seed is thus fully as efficacious, if not more 
so, in securing reproduction, than a very large number of small 
ones, and by its greater individual vigor, would probably have an 
infinitely better chance of survival in a dense, growing bamboo 
jungle, where small weakly seedlings would be utterly incapable 
of reaching the light. This, indeed, is probably the key to its 
genesis. — Indian Card ening. 
MUSHROOM FOLK-LORE. 
The mysteriously rapid growth of the mushroom and its cur- 
ious tendency to spring up in rings naturally attracted to it in old 
times much fantastic superstition. A common country belief in 
