86 
I HE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
and surrounded by cold air, was still frozen. This plant, it seems 
could draw at once upon the constructive materials deposited in 
its reserve store-house. 
There are various parts of a plant which serve as such treasure- 
,fvauilts. To them, all summer long as to a bank, there is a con- 
stant inflow of deposits. Roots or parts of roots, stems or parts 
of such, scales, etc., may all be employed for storage. 
Providence, R. I. 
PLAXT IXTELLIGEXCE. 
By F. Bradshaw. 
In observing and studying nature the thing which impresses 
and grows on one is the mind, the intelligence displayed. In some 
plants more than instinct is apparent and reason of no low order 
can be seen. Every one knows how most plants secure pollina- 
tion by bees or other insects. So various are their devices, so 
beautiful the arrangement of their parts for the desired end, we 
are lost in wonder more and more as we examine one after an- 
other. 
How many people look at the nettle with any degree of inter- 
est—a thing to be dodged as we reach for a neighboring flower? 
And who has solved the meaning of those vicious stinging hairs ? 
Until this year, I never gave the plant more than a passing look, 
but one day, not long ago, something inspired me to take home 
some of the tall spikes of the creek nettle ( Urfica holoscn'ca) 
for study. The flowers look like stringy catkins and are dispos- 
ed in full clusters in the axils of the leaves. 
The two upper clusters were green while those below were 
white and one naturally supposied the green ones to be immature 
flowers or buds. But placed under an ordinary lens they proved 
to be pistillate blossoms, while the white ones were staminate. 
They are apetalous, that is with calyx and no corolla and they 
were all closed—little white globes. 
A touch with a needle and— pop ! they fly open and four stamens 
are there, thie filaments twice as long as the lobes of the calyx 
and standing curved, cup-like, each with a comparatively large 
globular anther. At first I thought it surj^rising that the stamin- 
