416 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. Ill, No. 6, 
All the bearings of the work upon our conceptions of the phe- 
nomena of etiolation cannot be touched in a brief review. The 
following extract from page 228 may be of interest : 
“ It is to be seen, therefore, that the phenomena of etiolation 
rest upon and consist in the behavior of plants consequent upon 
the absence of the morphogenic influence of light. Some species 
show an adaptation to this absence of light, or to the positive 
influence of darkness, by which the shoots or petioles are elon- 
gated in such a manner as to constitute an effort to escape from 
darkness or to attain illumination.” 
Someone has suggested that etiolation gives us a means whereby 
we may determine which are the primitive elements of certain 
plant organs. For example, with leaves, the stipules persist in 
comparison with the leaf-blade. In such a case the completeness 
of the etiolation will influence the results. The present memoir 
will appeal to American botanists interested in the subject, con- 
taining as it does important contributions to our knowledge. 
THE GENUS PEDITIA WITH ONE NEW SPECIES. 
James S. Hine. 
The genus Pcditia includes some of the largest of our Tipulidse. 
The antennae are each composed of sixteen segments. The palpi 
each have three segments, of which the last is whiplash-like and 
much longer than the other two taken together. The auxiliary 
vein ends in the costa. The anterior crossvein is very oblique 
and is in nearly the same straight line with the inner margin of 
the discal cell and the posterior crossvein. 
When Osten Sacken published Part IV of “ Monographs of 
North American Diptera ” he mentioned one species of the genus 
from this continent, but in his “ Western Diptera ” he described 
another. Therefore at the present time there are two recognized 
species described from America, one from eastern and one from 
western United States. In “Psyche,” Volume VII, 201, Aid- 
rich discusses these species and figures the wing of one of them. 
In the same volume, page 229, Osten Sacken gives some state- 
ments from his manuscript notes, in which he gives further obser- 
vations on his west coast species and states that in Bigot’s col- 
lection he has seen a Pcditia with a very extraordinary modifica- 
tion of the coloration of the wings, and mentions especially a 
broad, brown border running along the posterior margin of the 
wing from the root to the apex. 
There is before me at the present time a very fine specimen 
which suggests the last mentioned insect, and which was taken 
at Port Renfrew, British Columbia, July 27, 1902, by R. C. 
Osburn, who was at that time teaching zoology at the Minnesota 
