As an indication of the abundance of illustrations in the first volume it may be stated that there are nineteen full-page pictures of animals, grouped from studies after nature; fifty-two finished cuts in the text of apes and monkeys; twelve of bats; twenty-eight of cats; and thirtyeight of dogs. A volume on insects has appeared, and the second volume on mammals is now in course of publication.

a comparatively small beginning the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries has, by its practical results in pisciculture, assumed so much importance that Congress last spring appropriated fifty thousand dollars for the work of 1877. It is understood that this appropriation is to be devoted solely to the raising of fish, and not for any purely scientific investigations, although by the excellent economical management of Professor Baird and his assistants in past years a great deal has been 1 United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Part III. Report of the Commissioner for 1873-74 and 1874-75. Washington. 1876. 8vo, pp. 777.

done, by their gratuitous labors, to extend the knowledge of such marine and fresh-water animals of the United States as form the food of fishes. The present report is wholly practical in its nature, comprising an inquiry into the decrease of the food fishes, and the propagation of food fishes in the waters of the United States. Appended to the report are essays, mostly taken from foreign sources, on fisheries and fish culture in the Old World. These essays are very suggestive, and it is to be expected that the results of experiments and studies made by the present commission will lead to discoveries and records of equal value, should the commission be maintained by the government for a sufficient number of years.

HYATT'S NORTH AMERICAN SPONGES.1 The second part of this elaborate revision of our North American sponges contains a good many novel and interesting facts regarding the influence of temperature and the nature of the sea-bottom upon the growth, variation, and distribution of our useful sponges, as well as the mode of fishing for and preparing them for the market. Professor Hyatt regards the sponges as forming distinct sub-kingdom or branch of animals, equivalent structurally to the Vertebrata or any of the larger divisions which are characterized by the most important structural differences." The excellence of the plates shows how well photography may be applied to the delineation of these animals.

66 a

RECENT BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS.- Reconciliation of Science and Religion. By Alexander Winchell, LL. D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1877. 12mo, pp.

403.

Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences. Vol. ii., Part I. January, 1876-June, 1877. Davenport, Iowa, July. 1877. 8vo, pp. 148. 3 plates. Account of the Discovery of Inscribed Tablets. By Rev. J. Gass. With a Description by Dr. R. J. Farquharson. (Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, vol. ii.) Davenport, Iowa, July, 1877. 8vo, pp. 23. 3 plates.

List of the Vertebrated Animals now or lately living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London. Sixth Edition. London. 1877. 8vo, pp. 519, with

cuts.

Zur Morphologie des Tracheensystems. Von Dr. J. A. Palmén. Helsingfors. 1877. 8vo, pp. 149. 2 plates.

Annual Report of the Entomological Society of the Province of Ontario for the year 1876. Toronto. 1877. 8vo, pp. 58.

On the Dispersal of Non-Migratory Insects by Atmospheric Agencies. By Albert Müller (Basileensis). (Reprinted from Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. 1871.) Basle. 1877. 8vo, pp. 16.

Report of the Director of the Central Park Menagerie, Department of Public Parks, City of New York, for year 1876. New York. 1877. 8vo, pp. 34. Bathybius und die Moneren. Von Ernst Haeckel. 8vo, pp. 12. 1877.

Brehm's Thierleben. Bd. 2. Heft i.-iv. Leipzig. 1877. New York: B. Westermann & Co. 40 cents a Heft.

De for Ager, Eng, og Have skadeligste Insekter og Smaakryb. Af W. M. Schoyen. Kristiania, 1875. 12mo, pp. 212. 8 plates.

1 Revision of the North American Porifera. With Remarks upon Foreign Species. Part II. (Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. ii., Part IV., No. 5. Boston, May 28, 1877. 4to, pp. 73. 3 carbon photographs.

De i Husene skadeligste Insekter og Midder, der angribe og bedærve vore Madvarer, Klæder, Bohave og svrige Eiendele under Tag. Af W. M. Schoyen. Kristiania, 1876. 12mo, pp. 102. 3 plates.

Enumeratio Insectorum Norvegicorum. Fasciculum III. Catalogum Lepidopterorum Continentem. Auctore H. Siebke defuncto, edidit J. Sparre Schneider. Christiania, 1876. 8vo, pp. 188.

Enumeratio Insectorum Norvegicorum. Fasciculum IV. Catalogum Dipterorum Continentem. Auctore H. Siebke defuncto, edidit J. Sparre Schneider. Christiania, 1877. 8vo, pp. 255.

Some Remarkable Gravel Ridges in the Merrimac Valley. (Abstract.) By George F. Wright. (From the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. xix.)

I. On the Brains of some Fish-Like Vertebrates. II. On the Serrated Appendages of the Throat of Amia. III. On the Tail of Amia. By Burt G. Wilder. 1876. 8vo, pp. 10, with a plate. (From the Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Buffalo Meeting, August, 1876.)

GENERAL NOTES.

BOTANY.1

VIOLETS. Most of our readers are aware that many species of violets have, in summer, flowers which are totally unlike the showy, attractive blossoms of early spring; for instance, the lance-leaved violet and the arrow-leaved violet bear late, inconspicuous flowers, in which the petals are reduced to the merest rudiments, and only two or three stamens with pollen are present. Flowers of this sort have long been known, but they need to be more carefully examined with reference to their specific peculiarities. It is proposed to give in this note a preliminary sketch of the literature of the subject, in the hope that some of our botanists may collect and study the forms here referred to. Dillenius, in 1732, (Hort. Eltham, 408) observed that Viola mirabilis has flowers of two kinds the spring flowers, with well-developed corolla and stamens seldom produce fruit, but the later flowers, in which he found stamens and no petals, always do. Linnæus (Semina Muscorum Detecta, 1732) refers to Viola mirabilis as one of the plants which had been thought to bear fruit without any antecedent blossoms; but he states that in the case of this plant, as in others referred to, blossoms with good stamens and pistils are present. It is said by Dr. Oliver that in a later work Linnæus remarks of Viola mirabilis that "the early flowers provided with a corolla are often barren, while others, appearing subsequently, and destitute of a corolla, are fertile."

Conrad Sprengel (1793) refers to Viola mirabilis as bearing two kinds of flowers, but states that he had not had an opportunity of examining the plant.

In 1823, De Gingins, in his Mémoire sur la Famille des Violacées, page 11, writes that "most of the species of the section of violets properly socalled have the singular property of sometimes producing incomplete 1 Conducted by PROF. G. L. GOODALE.

flowers more or less destitute of a corolla; their fruits are nevertheless as perfect as, or even more perfect than, those which follow complete flowers. This phenomenon is observed frequently in autumn at the second blooming of violets; and the exotic species transplanted to our gardens have, under unfavorable conditions, apetalous flowers with deformed essential organs, which nevertheless bear perfect fruit."

From Dr. Oliver's review, previously referred to, we take the following notice of a work to which we do not have present access. M. Monnier, of Nancy (Guillemin's Archives de Botanique, 1833), says that none of the early spring flowers of Viola hirta bear fruit. "After the first flowering the leaves take on a further development: they become hairy, and bear in their axils flowers destitute of a corolla and with the five stamens almost always distinct and shorter than the ovary. The peduncles bearing these flowers curve downwards and bury the ovaries under the surface of the soil, where the seeds are ripened."

In a review given at second hand in Botanische Zeitung for November, 1854, are some quotations from a memoir by Timbal-Lagrave (On the Genus Viola, 1853): “It is the custom in botany to examine a plant when it is grown, that is, when it has completed its development or has reached the climax of its vegetation and is in flower. This usage, well enough for most cases, is faulty when it is applied to the section Nominium of Viola. It has bere led botanists into errors and doubts, which have rendered the study of this section a matter of great difficulty. The period of early blossoms in Viola is the youth of the plant; its old age is another epoch in its development which was unknown to the older botanists, and herein lies the ground of the difficulties. . . . In the stemless violets the following facts can be observed: in early spring a few leaves appear, and these develop until April; then come the blossoms with richly colored petals, and often with some fragrance, but these flowers, although provided with essential organs, are infertile. At first I believed that this anomaly is dependent on some modification of the stigma, or caused by some atmospheric influence, but I am now convinced that it arises from the lack of pollen in the anthers; fertilization cannot take place; the flower soon fades, dries up, or decays without any result.

.

"In this period, which I call youth, a new growth takes place: from the cluster of persistent radical leaves accompanying the first flowers new leaves arise, which soon become large and acquire firmness, having even larger and stiffer hairs. Towards the end of May and June new flowers come up, but they are very different from the first. In some species the blossoms have no petals, in others only one or two, but these are always inclosed in the calyx and are frequently the merest rudiments. The whole floral apparatus is modified, and yet fertilization takes place. . . . . A comparative study of the different organs of the first and second flowers of these plants, the growth or the abortion of this or that part, the position, the duration, and the functions, afford many essential characters

...

which, added to those already known, will aid in the study of this genus."

In Botanische Zeitung for October, 1857, Daniel Müller, of Upsal, gives an instructive account and a few figures of the incomplete flowers of certain violets. He states that the anthers contained only a few grains, which did not seem to him like perfect pollen, but rather like minute ovules. In spite of a whimsical theory with which he closes his paper, the account must be valued for the accurate descriptions of the incomplete flowers of several species.

A very interesting paper on this subject was read in July, 1860, before the Botanical Society of France, by M. Eugène Michelet. The statements made by him agree essentially with those just given.

In 1863, Von Mohl (in Botanische Zeitung) gives an abstract of the literature relating to cleistogamic flowers, and presents some instructive results of his own observations, of which the following is an abstract: "The process of fertilization in Viola elatior F. was more easily investigated than in the other species examined. In this species, as in all apetalous violets, the style is short and hooked, and in immediate contact with the anthers with which it alternates. Besides these two stamens which in this plant I always found developed, I discovered in some flowers one or two more. Although the anther cells are only one seventh to one sixth of an inch long, they have a number of pollen grains. The greater part of these push forth pollen tubes even while they are still in the anther, and these tubes pass out of the upper end of the anther cells, in thick strings, directly to the contiguous stigma. If the stamens in a fresh flower are drawn away from the stigma, the tubes will not break, but the pollen grains will be released from the opened anther cell, so that the latter will be left empty. On tearing away the anthers, some pollen grains which have not pushed out any tubes will fall out from them. It appears to me questionable whether without such a mechanical process pollination from these would take place; at least I have not observed any such case. With the drying of the anthers after fertilization, the tubes in their course from the anthers to the stigma dry up also, and then break off when the anthers separate, without withdrawing the pollen grains which are there held fast. Similar appearances are presented by the anthers in Viola canina, which touch the stigma. Besides this, it is seen that from those anthers, which in this species are always turned away from the stigma, pollen tubes start out and pass down in a serpentine course over the upper part of the ovary and the back and sides of the style. This observation is easily made by means of a Lieberkühn illuminating mirror. In this species, also, I frequently found pollen grains which had fallen out of the anthers, but I am not sure whether this discharge takes place naturally; for if we examine anthers which have become dry after fertilization, and on which, therefore, while fresh no force could have been exerted, they will be found