VOL. Il. | Proceedings of Socteties. ae 
The President then introduced Mr. Edward Muybridge, who de- 
livered a lecture on ‘‘The Science of Animal Locomotion,’’ with 
lantern illustration of consecutive phases of animal movements and 
syntethical reproductions by the zoopraxiscope. 
CALIFORNIA BOTANICAL CLus. February 25, 1892. The Vice- 
President, Mrs. M. W. Kincaid, in the chair. 
Brofessor Douglas H. Campbell delivered a lecture on the Origin 
of Flowering Plants. The lecturer stated that the ancestral forms 
of all the higher plants are to be sought among the fresh-water 
alge. From these were probably developed forms like the simplest 
of the existing liverworts, and from these the higher forms, Bryo- 
phytes, Pteridophytes and Spermaphytes were later derived. 
The structure of the simpler liverworts was briefly sketched and 
the development and fertilization of the archegonium and the sub- 
sequent development of the sporogonium described. Attention 
was called to the motile spermatozoids, and the necessity of water 
in fertilization, as indications of the aquatic nature of the ancestors 
of these forms. 
Special attention was called to Riccia and Anthoceros as the most 
primitive in some respects of the liverworts, and the latter was 
especially spoken of as representing a form like that from which the 
higher plants have probably come. 
The forms were next taken up, and after showing how the pro- 
thallium represents the liverwort thallus, and the fern itself the sporo- 
gonium, attention was called to the gradual reduction of the sexual 
prothallium and the increasing development of the sporophyte in 
the higher forms. It was then shown how this was accompanied by 
the development of heterospery in several groups, resulting finally 
in one case, at least, in the production of seed-bearing plants. 
Flowers are only groups of special spore-producing leaves, with 
more or less accessory leaves in the more specialized ones. The 
simpler flowers are comparable to the spore-bearing leaves of an 
Osmunda, for example, or a spike of Equisetum. In the heteros- | 
perous Pteridophytes spores of two kinds were developed, and 
these in the flowering plants are the pollen-spores and the embryo- 
sac. The ovule and anther are simply special forms of sporangia. — 
In conclusion the influence of two groups of animals—viz., birds 
and insects—upon the further evolution of flowering plants were 
