NOTES AND ABSTRACTS. 



273 



bright yellow, or yellow-red, often brown at the tip. Wings are clear 

 like water. 



Egg. — Greenish white and translucent. 



Larva.— A twenty-legged caterpillar, the abdominal prolegs being 

 somewhat paler than the six thoracic legs; the body is wrinkled and 

 whitish yellow, with a faint brown shade in older larvae; the head is 

 brown; the jaws are red-brown; the eyes are black; the body narrows 

 at the hind end. The larvse have an unpleasant odour. 



Cocoon. — The cocoon, under cover of which pupation takes place, 

 is cylindrical, brown, and covered with particles of soil. 



The life-history of the sawfly is given in this article, and it would 

 appear that the egg is laid in the flower-bud in the spring, the larva 

 subsequently eating its way to the kernel of the stone. The cocoon is 

 made in soil in June and July, and in this cover the winter is passed. 



Fruits readily fall from the tree when infested, and they should be 

 collected and destroyed at once before the larvse leave them. 



The soil below infested trees should be worked and the turned-up 

 layers beaten. — J. S. 



Saxifrag-a madida. By J. F. {Garden, Nov. 6, 1909, p. 538).— 

 This is a new Saxifrage intermediate between S. Fortunei and S. cor- 

 tusaefolia. It is autumn flowering, white, and forms a large pyramidal 

 panicle. It is the first of the three to flower, S. cortusaejolia not being 

 many days behind, and S. Fortunei ten or twelve days later. — H. R. D. 



Seedling's, Transpiration of {Bat. Gaz. vol. xlviii. pp. 275- 

 282, October 1909 ; with 5 figs.). — Seedlings of various plants were 

 grown in a saturated atmosphere in a greenhouse (rel. humidity 

 60 per cent.), and in room (rel. humidity 16 to 32 per cent.), and 

 the differences in transpiration recorded. The ratio of the trans- 

 piration of moist-air leaves to that of dry-air leaves of the same species 

 varied from 2*2 to 10. Much individual variation was found. 



The plants from moist air were taller, more slender, longer-leaved, 

 less hairy, with thinner, lighter-coloured, and more translucent leaves. 



The leaf thickness was 25 to 40 per cent, greater in the dry- air 

 plants. In very moist air the leaves of Sinapis and Cucumis are 

 less indented on the margin. The stomata of moist-air plants could 

 not close so efficiently or quickly as those of the dry-air plants. Young 

 plants of Ipomoea were, however, soon able to adapt themselves to 

 dry- air conditions. — G. F. S.-E. ■ . 



Siparuna thea. By E. Gilg and H. Strauss (Not. Konig. Bot. 

 Berlin, 45, vol. v. Nov. 7, 1909, pp. 113-114).— The plant described 

 by Seeman {Journ. of Bot. II. (1864), p. 343) as Citriosma thea, 

 and afterwards named Siparuna thea by De Candolle, flowered for 

 the first time in 1909 when planted in the border of the Colonial House 

 of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem. It had previously been grown in 

 tubs. The charaoterist'ic flowers and leaves show that it does not 



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