of opening the pistil is not so long as the stamens by 3/4 in.; on the
second it has grown to be as long as the stamens, but it is not in
condition to receive the pollen till after noon of the second day.
Although the flowers on some eighteen inches of the spike have already
blossomed, none of the ovaries have been fertilized; they are dropping
off, but I am rather sanguine regarding those about the middle of the
spike. So great is the superfluity of nectar contained in the flowers,
that on the afternoon of the second day it often drops from the cups,
and the least shake to the scape brings it down in a shower. The main
beauty of the inflorescence consists in the dense bottle-brush-like mass
of bright yellow anthers. This plant, together with several smaller
ones, was contributed to this garden by Dr. Edward Palmer, who collected
them in their native wilds--the mountains of Northern Mexico--some three
years ago. He found them growing in a limited and rather inaccessible
locality in gravelly and rocky soil some miles from Monterey. In
addition to those he sent here he also sent a quantity to the garden of
the Agricultural Department at Washington, and some to Dr. Engelmann,
the eminent botanist at St. Louis. To Dr. Engelmann he also sent a piece
of an old flower stem and some dried capsules which he found upon an
old plant, and it was from these specimens in 1880 that the doctor
was enabled to describe for the first time the inflorescence of this
Agave.--_The Garden_.

* * * * *




ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE NATURAL FATS.