The homomorphism of the orchids and asclepiads is especially interesting because of the objection to the Darwinian theory that it presents; the coincidence is certainly unfavorable to the notion of fortuitous variation. The orchids and asclepiads agree in producing pollinia or pollen-packets which attach themselves to the bodies of insects and are thus transferred from flower to flower. Although the two flowers differ greatly in the details of their structure, this curious contrivance occurs in no other plants, and yet the two orders are as widely separated as it is possible to conceive. The orchids belong to the petaloid division of Monocotyledons; the asclepias to the gamopetalous Dicotyledons, with their nearest allies among the Apocynaceæ, of which Vinca, the periwinkle, is perhaps the best known representative. Although agreeing in this one particular, the flowers are in other respects very dissimilar. Another contrivance for promoting cross-fertilization met with in unallied plants is the mouse-trap arrangement of hairs by means of which small flies are temporarily imprisoned. This arrangement occurs in Aristolochia, in species of Arum, and in Ceropegia, one of the asclepiads. In these plants, where the affinities are so slight, the mechanism for fertilization must in each case have arisen independently. THE BAMBOO AND PLANT GROWTH --R. CAMPER DAY If the many families of flowering plants were arranged in the order of their utility to man or in the order of their abundance, the first place in the list would unquestionably be assigned to the great family of grasses. Of their omnipresence and abundance some idea may be obtained from the fact that at least four thousand different kinds have been described, and a German naturalist has estimated that they constitute a twenty-second part of all known plants. Their utility as food producers becomes obvious as soon as we recall the names of rice, wheat, barley, oats, rye, and Indian corn, and remember how large a proportion of our food is made from their seeds. Most of these civilized and somewhat unnatural grasses have been so long under cultivation, and so much altered by man’s selection, that they are totally unfitted to shift for themselves, and would soon become extinct if brought into competition with wild plants. The fact that the wild forms from which they are descended can not now be identified with certainty shows that their cultivation must date from the very earliest ages. Rice alone is said to furnish more sustenance to the human race than any other single species; the common meadow grasses, such as the purple-tipped Anthoxanthum, which fills the fields with its penetrating fragrance when the hay is newly mown, are almost the only food of sheep and cattle; and those tall and sturdy canes whose juice we squeeze out between rollers, and clarify and crystallize into sugar, are only modified stems of grass.