THE GAS PLANT. 
I 2 I 
spike, hardly an inch long, of a chestnut brown. This may be 
called Lycnanthemum tenue major. It is common on the Brocken 
Mountain. There is a third, which I name Lycnanthemum tenue. 
This sends up many short rush stems, only a finger high, with a 
very small spike approaching chestnut brown in color. I have 
seen this nowhere but on the Brocken.” 
The description of the first of these three Lycnanthemum spe¬ 
cies is answered by no other plant of the Brocken but Eleocharis 
palustris. The diagnosis of L. tenue is more brief, though not less 
decisive of another member of the genus. I tried once the reading 
of this diagnosis to a botanist who is facile with his pencil, to see 
what he would make of it. As soon as the drawing was done I 
asked, “ Now wfiat have you ? ” and he answered promptly, Eleo¬ 
charis acicularis ” and the answer cannot be gainsaid. 
Local floras at once adorned with scholarship, bright with vivid 
pen-pictures of living things, and redolent of woodland and of 
field, are rare in every age; and this fine old classic by Thalius is 
one of the most charming of all the books that answer that 
description. 
THE GAS PLANT. 
By Professor W. J. Beal, 
Agricultural College, Michigan. 
The gas plant is an herbaceous perennidl of the Rue family 
(Rutaceae), known technically as Dictamnus alb us L. (D. Fraxi- 
nella Pers.). It exhales a vapor which is inflammable—thus jus¬ 
tifying its name “ gas plant.” 
The pistil is compound, deeply lobed, consisting of five carpels, 
each containing 2-3 seeds, “ each carpel, when ripe, splitting into 
2 valves,” which divide into an outer and an inner layer. In 
other words, when mature, a considerable portion of the endo- 
carp separates from the exocarp, and at once each half begins to 
make the attempt to twist in an opposite direction, much in the 
manner of the ripe half-carpels of a vetch or pea. In this opera¬ 
tion, the half-endocarps press the apical portion of the carpel wide 
