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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
young, like all tlie other puff-balls, will scarcely do to recommend as edible, 
since it is so small and not attractive by its colour, even when young, and 
very dangerous at an earlier stage.’ There seems always to be conflicting 
evidence about the quality of fungi, the truth probably being that the same 
species may be wholesome or the contrary, according to local or climatic 
condition, or from idiosyncratic peculiarities of constitution. Sparagris 
crispa, one of the largest and most beautiful of our fungi, has occurred lately 
in two or three localities ; and I have myself had some dressed which came 
from Miss Broadwood, of Lyne, in Hampshire, which proved excellent. A 
single specimen, like Ly coper don giganteum , is so large that it would almost 
be sufficient for a Lord Mayor’s feast.” 
Nutrition and Sex in Plants. — In the American Naturalist for November, 
Mr. Thomas Meehan gives a short account of his paper on the above subject. 
He refers to his u laws of sex,” read last year, and now proposes to show 
that a decreased power of nutrition is one of the operating causes against 
that high state of vitality necessary to produce the female sex. He stated 
that there were two classes of male flowers on the common chestnut (Cas- 
tanea Americana ), one from the axils of leaves on weak branches, the other 
terminating the vigorous shoots, only on which the female flowers are 
formed. The axillary male flowers mostly matured before the supra-pistillate 
ones opened. These were extremely weak, owing to the superior absorptive 
powder of the females below them. He then exhibited some specimens of 
these, as well as some from a veiy large chestnut tree, which had always 
borne abundant fruit, but had this year produced nothing but male flowers. 
The leaves were all striped with yellow and green, indicating, as every 
experienced gardener knows, that nutrition was obstructed. Plants over 
watered, by which the young feeding roots rotted, always put on this yellow 
cast. The yellow tint always followed 11 ringing ” the branches, or any 
accident done to the bark. The influence of this defective power of nutrition, 
in this instance, he held so clear that he had no difficulty in concluding that 
it was one of the agents which operated on the laivs of vitality that governed 
the sexes. 
Difference of Sex with Difference of Station . — It is a very curious fact that 
there are many plants common to this country and America which present 
different sexual characteristics in the two. At a late meeting of the Phila- 
delphia Academy of Science, Mr. Meehan exhibited some specimens of 
Pumex oblongifolius , a naturalized flock from Europe. He said that so far 
as he could ascertain from European specimens, and the descriptions of 
Babington, Bromfield, and other English botanists, the plant was there 
hermaphrodite ; but there, as correctly stated by Hr. Asa Gray, it was 
monceciously polygamous. He thought the fact that plants hermaphrodite 
in one country becoming unisexual in another was worthy of more attention 
• by those engaged in the study of the laws of sex than had been given to it. 
This Pumex did not stand alone j P. crispus and P. patienta exhibited the 
same thing. Fragaria was another instance well known to horticulturists, 
although the fact scientifically had not received due weight. The average 
tendency of the strawberry in Europe was to hermaphrodism — here to 
produce pistillate forms. He also called attention to the fact that in these 
American specimens unisexuality was in proportion to axial rigor. This law 
