With respect to the abortion of tendrils, certain cultivated varieties of Cucurbita pepo have, according to Naudin, either quite lost these organs or bear semi-monstrous representatives of them. In my limited experience I have met with only one instance of their natural suppression, namely, in the common bean. All the other species of Vicia, I believe, bear tendrils; but the bean is stiff enough to support its own stem, and in this species, at the end of the petiole where a tendril ought to have arisen, a small pointed filament is always present, about a third of an inch in length, and which must be considered as the rudiment of a tendril. This may be the more safely inferred, because I have seen in young, unhealthy specimens of true tendril-bearing plants similar rudiments. In the bean these filaments are variable in shape, as is so frequently the case with all rudimentary organs, being either cylindrical or foliaceous, or deeply furrowed on the upper surface. It is a rather curious little fact that many of these filaments when foliaceous have dark-colored glands on their lower surfaces, like those on the stipules, which secrete a sweet fluid; so that these rudiments have been feebly utilized. One other analogous case, though hypothetical, is worth giving. Nearly all the species of Lathyrus possess tendrils; but L. nissolia is destitute of them. This plant has leaves which must have struck every one who has noticed them with surprise, for they are quite unlike those of all common papilionaceous plants, and resemble those of a grass. In L. aphaca the tendril, which is not highly developed (for it is unbranched, and has no spontaneous revolving power), replaces the leaves, the latter in function being replaced by the large stipules. Now, if we suppose the tendrils of L. aphaca to become flattened and foliaceous, like the little rudimentary tendrils of the bean, and the large stipules, not being any longer wanted, to become at the same time reduced in size, we should have the exact counterpart of L. nissolia, and its curious leaves are at once rendered intelligible to us.