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XATURE XOTES 
loculi and scatter their pollen. This can be artificially effected 
by pressing the finger or a pencil on the corolla. A startling 
example of sudden motion is shown by the flowers of the various 
Australian Stylidiums. One, Stylidium gramini folium, is a very 
free flowerer, and a neat and pretty greenhouse plant. In this 
and all the genus the stamens and style are united in one single 
column, and this is very elastic, and reposes at the side of the 
flower. When, however, this is touched with the point of a 
needle, it starts with a violent spurt from the side of the flower 
where it was resting to the other, and in this movement the 
anthers are torn from their filaments, and the pollen shed on 
the stigma. 
The genus Mimulus furnishes examples of very interesting 
movements in the stigmas. All the species of the genus show it, 
even the popular Musk and the Cardinal Mimulus of Mexico, 
but the Californian half-shrubby Diplactis glutinosus clearly 
exhibits it. The stigma may be likened to the seed-leaves 
(cotyledons) of the common cress or lettuce, and when in repose 
one lobe is depressed and so displays its inner surface. Take a 
pin and touch this, and the lobe will straighten itself and assume 
an erect posture against its fellow lobe. On a bright, warm 
day, the normal position is soon regained and the experiment 
may be again and again repeated. The common yellow monkey- 
flower, as well as the many hybrid spotted large-flowering 
varieties, all present to view this trait of interesting motion, 
as do Bignonia capreclata, and freshly expanded flowers of Tecoma 
jasminoides. It may be that this fornt of stigma is without 
viscidity, and so Nature has provided other means of attach- 
ing the pollen-grains till they have performed their special 
mission. 
In Passifiora edulis and other species the styles are at first 
erect, but when the pollen is mature and the anthers burst open 
they turn down and lower themselves towards the stamens, 
and then return to their former position in the flower as 
suddenly. 
The hairs which clothe the styles of many of the Campanulas 
show a very unique motion : they fold back on themselves like 
a stocking, and in the act draw with them the pollen-grains, the 
shedding of which they thus determine. A neat little Australian 
sub-shrub, the Leschenauliia, has a cup-formed stigma, which is 
fringed with somewhat long hairs. At the moment of the 
anthers opening, part of the pollen is shed into the little cup 
thus formed, and it then closes together to grasp the grains, 
and the hairs join each other so as to prevent the waste of the 
fertilising grains. 
Standing on a sunlit heath in early autumn, and looking over 
the mingled heather, bracken and gorse, most people have been 
startled by the little snaps and cracks they hear around them, 
due to the sudden bursting of the seed-pods of the furze or 
gorse, and the different wild vetches also show this on any bright, 
