72 
tHE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
his predecessor I came into the house, consulted my 
Field, Forest and Garden Botany," and found that the 
Salpiglossis^ although in the fig wort family, is in a section 
of that order intermediate between the figworts and the 
nightshades. This was news to me, but the little Dory- 
phoras and their ancestors had known it, I doubt not,, 
since potato beetles and trumpet-tongues were first 
evolved upon earth. They knew their tribes and sub-tribes- 
so much better than I did, that I felt almost sorry I had 
put such botanists out of life, 
Springfield, Mass. 
CHLOROPHYLL 
At this lovely season of the 3'ear, when foliage of infin- 
ite shades, and verdure in all its vernal freshness, clothe 
the landscape, with an indescribable charm, it probably 
seldom occurs to the beholder that this universal green- 
ness represents the first and most vital essential of his own 
existence, it being practicallv the one and only vehicle for 
the transformation of solar activit}^ into potential life. 
All life is dependent, directly or indirectly, upon vegeta- 
tion, and the old saying that '*all flesh is grass" is abso- . 
lutely and literally true if we accept grass as the symbol 
of vegetation generally. The meat-eaters are always de- 
pendent upon vegetable-feeding animals, as a moments' 
consideration of our own case will clearly show, and hence 
we are easil^ded to the conclusion that the entire realm of 
organic life is based on the capacity of plants to grow. 
We next find that all plants, except those which are 
practically parasitic ones, or fungi, which feed upon plant 
tissues dead or alive, and thus none the less exist at the 
expense of the green ones, can only form their foliage under 
the influences of sunlight, direct or diffused. Growth 
under the influence of electric or other artificial light forms 
no exception to this rule, for we have only to investigate 
their source to find the sunlight as its origin since one and 
all kinds are obtained by the consumption, of coal, oils, 
&c., which are merely the stored-up products through the 
