LEES : YORKSHIRE BUR-REEDS. 



6. — We placed specimens of the wood on a shelf in the cellar 

 and examined it day after day, until the luminosity seemed 

 to pass away altogether, and the wood, when examined about 

 three weeks after our first observations were made, was 

 entirely non-luminous. 

 I should not now have offered these notes for publication, had 

 not your attention been previously directed towards what I believe 

 will prove a very' pleasing investigation for young naturalists during 

 the coming winter. 



I said above that I believe that the wood was from the common 

 pine, but I am sorry that I cannot now confirm my first observations, 

 as I find that which I stored away has either been burned or misplaced. 

 I have, however, at the present time about half a load of wood in 

 ray cellar, and before finishing this sentence I have been down to 

 examine it. There is beech, elm, sycamore, and oak, but no pine ; 

 but none of this wood shows the least luminosity. 



I also examined the wood referred to microscopically, with similar 

 results to those arrived at by Mr, W. E. Brown {pp. cit. p. 327). 

 Will Mr. Musson or Mr. Brown now obtain flakes, thinner the better, 

 of the outer portions of fir-wood, nearer to the bark, and mount 

 specimens — after soaking in turpentine — in balsam? In these flakes, 

 if the wood is dark coloured or blackish, the fungoid growth will be 

 distinctly seen in the woody tissues. After this is done, will the 

 gentlemen referred to compare flakes of the luminous wood, then tell 

 us the results of their observations? This I regret I did not do, and 

 I have been punished, by not having any more examples to tempt 

 my curiosity. 



BOTANICAL NOTE. 



The Yorkshire Bur-Reeds.— Our field botanists must be careful not to 

 gather Sparganiiini until in quite ripe fruit; and it is impossible to decide whether 

 the two-thirds ripe examples sent to me are S. rainosuin or neglectinn. Mr. W. H. 

 Beeby refers the \Yensleydale plant sent him, recorded as neglechini by me in 

 August number, to ramosiim — 'to a form which in its young state closely resembles 

 neglecttun, and which is not easily separated unless the eye is familiar with both 

 forms till the fruit is ripe and dry, and has assumed its ultimate form.' It seems 

 that there are connecting links, then, in facies if not in ultimate character, between 

 Mr. Beeby's new split and Curtis's aggregate. 



My Spargannun record must therefore be expunged as an error, and, as 

 Mr. Beeby further writes, ' in case other specimens should be sent, kindly let the 

 fruit be as ripe as possible, as much time and trouble are thereby saved to me.' 

 The examples so promptly sent me by Mr. G. Roberts from ^lethley, Stanley, and 

 Sandall, by ^Ir.Walsh from Frizinghall and Shipley, and by Mr. P. F. Lee from 

 Coxley Dam and Batley, are all, so far, immature, and although presumably only 

 raynosum — being to my eyes identical with the Wensleydale plant — other and later 

 gatherings are necessitated before any trustworthy decision can be come to regarding 

 them. — F. Arnold Lees, Hawes, September 7th, 1885. 



Oct. 1885. 



