May, 1914.] 
Meeting of Biological Club. 
33i 
]. Dioscorea villosa L. Wild Yam. Stems slender and 
twining, G to 15 feet long; rootstocks slender, horizontal, woody; 
leaves heart-shaped, 9 to 13 nerved, acuminate at the apex, thin 
green, glabrous on top, sometimes pubescent beneath, 2 to 6 inches 
long, 1 to 4 inches wide, petioled; petiole often longer than the 
blade. Flowers greenish-yellow, the staminate 1-16 to f inch 
long in drooping panicles 3 to 6 inches long; the carpellate 3-16 
inch long in drooping racemes. Capsules membranous, strongly 
3 winged. General. 
2. Dioscorea bulbifera L. Air Potato. Twining vines; 
leaves about 2 inches long and 2 tc 3 inches broad, petioled, the 
petiole longer than the blade, halbard-shaped, acuminate at the 
apex, thin, green, 9-nerved. Flowers greenish, in loose axillary 
racemes. Tubers in the axils of the leaves. Tropical Asia. 
Escaped from gardens in Madison county. 
MEETINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL CLUB. 
Orton Hall, January 12, 1914. 
The meeting was called to order by the President at 7:30 
and the minutes were read and approved. The following were 
elected to membership: Norman Sherer, Floyd De Lashmut, 
Clayton Long, Maxwell Scarff, Margurite Ickes, Francis E. 
Piper, Harold Peebles and Christian R. Gaiser. 
The first paper of the evening was by Prof. Durrant, on the 
Biology of the Guinea Pig. Prof. Durrant kept Prof. Barrows’ 
Guinea pigs during the summer when the observations presented 
were made. The Guinea pig belongs to the order of Rodentia, 
to which order also belongs the water-pig of South America, which 
sometimes reaches a length of five or six feet and a height of 
eighteen or twenty inches. The Guinea pig is very prolific, the 
period of gestation being 66 or 67 days. The time of mating 
after birth is from five days to several weeks. The female is 
from 42 to 62 days old at the time of mating. As to the number 
of young in a litter, Prof. Durrant made several observations 
of which the following are the results: 
Four litters of two each, twelve litters of three each, three 
litters of four each. 
There is a great variation in the size of the young, but no 
relation between the size and the number in the litter. 
In one case he had a rough coat female crossed with a white 
male, which produced a white, red and black offspring. The 
same parents at a later time had a yellow rough coat young 
one. 
