84 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
which, as botanists know, often furnishes excellent characters to distinguish 
otherwise similar species. He treats here of Pyrolacece , Droseracece , Ceras - 
tium, and especially of Pedicularis, with illustrations. In two plates, filled 
with beautiful coloured figures, the seeds of 25 species of Pedicularis are 
strikingly depicted. 
The Study of Minute Fungi. — Some very useful practical remarks on 
this subject appear in the u American Naturalist,” by Dr. J. S. Billings. He 
says the attempt at a physiological classification of these organisms is as 
yet premature, the mere morphological classification being still so very 
incomplete that it is impossible, from published descriptions, to identify 
much more than half of the minute fungi which have been described, 
while a vast number have been collected and named which have never 
been described at all. He does not, therefore, recommend the microscopist 
who proposes to undertake this study, to try to do more at first than 
to recognize genera, and he furthermore advises him to confine his work 
for a time to half-a-dozen species which he can get named for 'him by some 
one who has the necessary facilities for so doing in the shape of identified 
specimens. For instance, having ascertained that he has a specimen of 
Valsa stellulata, let him first see whether he can get the spores to germi- 
nate. First, he may try them with a little water on some form of growing 
slide, the simplest form of which is to take the slide with the spores on it 
covered with a piece of thin glass just as he has been examining it under 
the microscope, and laying it across a narrow dish of water (a soap-dish or 
toothbrush-dish is just the thing) let two or three threads lead from the 
water to the edge of the thin glass cover. The growing slides of Hoffman, 
De Bary, Dr. Maddox, and those described by Dr. Curtis and the author in 
their report on fungi in connection with the Texas cattle fever, are all good 
and useful. The spores should be tried not only in water, but in fluids 
which will afford them some nutriment, such as juice of fruits or plants, 
Pasteur’s fluid, or on such media as a slice of potato, or blotting-paper soaked 
in lemon juice. 
Hypercotyledonary Germination is a somewhat rare event. Dr. Asa Gray 
says (in u Silliman’s American Journal ”) his attention has been called, by 
Mr. Guerineau, the gardener of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, to a re- 
markable instance, which occurs in all their seedlings of Delphinium nudi - 
caule, the unique red or red-and-yellow-flowered species of California. As 
this species is now in European cultivation, and a probable variety of it, 
D. Cardinale, was raised and figured in England several years ago, the pecu- 
liarity in question is likely to have been noted ; but he has seen no account 
of it. In germination, the slender radicle elevates a pair of well-formed 
ovate cotyledons in the usual way. These acquire full development ; but 
no plumule appears between them ; consequently the primary axis is here 
arrested. Soon a nassiform thickening is formed underground at the 
junction of the lower end of the radicle with the true root: from this is 
produced a slender-petaled 3-lobed leaf, which comes up by the side of the 
primary plantlet j soon a second leaf appears, and so on, setting up the per- 
manent axis of the plant from a bud which thus originates from the very 
base of a well-developed radicle, if not from the root itself. 
Hanlon's u Histoire des Plantes .” — This fine work, though it has made 
