Page:Natural History Review (1861).djvu/117

Rh et observations quædam in species generis Echitis Auctorum earumque distributio in genera emendata et nova.—Linnea Bd. xiv., pp. 387–454.

—Mittheilungen über einige Loranthaceen.—Flora, 1860, p. 465.

Diagnoses of Viscum album, and Loranthus europæus, with observations on their general history, distribution, germination, &c.

—Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Botanik. Part II.—Leipsic, 1860. 8vo. 192 pages, 8 plates, 4to.

Movements of plants, right and left. Motion of cells and contents. On the alleged occurrence of free or amorphous starch in Ornitho- galum.

—Revue des Cucurbitacées cultivés au Muséum, en 1859.—Ann. Sc. Nat. (Bot.). Ser. iv., tom. xii., pp. 79–164, with. 3 plates.

M. Naudin prefixes to the descriptive portion of this memoir, observations upon the nature and disposition of some of the floral organs of the Cucurbitaceæ, in continuation of a notice previously published by him (Ann. Sc. Nat. (Bot.) Ser. iv., tom. iv., p. 5, et seq.).

The so-called calyx-tube of the male flower, M. Naudin regards as a campanulate or tubuliform dilatation of the extremity of the peduncle; in other words, that it is a true receptacle, comparable to that of the rose, in the composition of which the calycine leaves take no part. He states the theory of congenital union or coalescence of the calyx segments to be, in the case of the Cucurbitaceæ, quite in- admissible. There is no trace of sutural lines on the "calyx-tubes" of any known species of the order. The pentagonal form which it sometimes assumes is due to the form of the peduncle, which is also pentagonal, the angles being simply prolonged upon the "calyx-tube," which is but a dilatation or expansion of it.

The true calyx, according to M. Naudin, consists but of the five lobes, which in some species are reduced to imperceptible teeth, and in others are strongly developed. In certain varieties of Cucurbita maxima they are entirely wanting, the flower consisting only of corolla and the staminal fascicle. M. Naudin leaves the question open as to whether the tubular lower portion, when present, of the "corolla," may be, in like manner, a modified process of the receptacle, in which case the lobes of the upper portion would answer to the true petals. The author confirms his previously published views on the structure of the stamens in Cucurbitaceæ, by further examination of species of Luffa, in which the two complete and bilocular stamens are divided to their base. In these plants the filaments do not alternate with the five corolla-lobes, but are in pairs; the filaments of each pair being collateral, and inserted upon the same point of the receptacle. An additional proof that the bilocular stamens of the Cucurbitaceæ are simple, but complete, is the fact that there exist species having really five stamens, alternating with the corolla-lobes. This return to the usual symmetry is presented by a plant not yet clearly determined, but probably belonging to the genus