32 



In August of the same year, "A lady in Roxbury " (Mass.) pre- 

 sented a small collection of flowering-plants and grasses. ■ In 1856, 

 Mrs. Isaac Clements, of Mechanicsville, Saratoga Co., N. Y., pre- 

 sented a collection of native plants, for which she was awarded the 

 Society's Silver Medal 



In 1864, the daughter of Dennis Murray (then deceased, but a 

 fomier member of the Society, a frequent exhibitor of native plants 

 and an excellent botanist) presented a collection of one hundred and 

 twenty-five species of native flowering-plants, collected near Boston; 

 eighty species of vascular cryptogams from America and Great 

 Britain; and sixty species of native and introduced grasses. There 

 IS also a collection of thirty species of native and garden-plants from 

 an unknown source. 



In June, 1875, Mr. George E. Davenport presented the collection 

 of American ferns now everywhere known as the " Davenport Her- 

 barium. At present writing there remain no actual desiderata 

 except root-specimens of Cheilnnthes leucopoda and Pellaea aspera, 

 and native specimens of Pellaea ternifolia and Adiantnm tricholepis; 

 but these are deficiencies that cannot remain long unsupplied if we 

 consider how many ferns, long regarded as rare and difficult to ob- 

 tain, have been placed within the reach of all through the exertions of 

 recent collectors. The collection now contains over 600 mounted 

 sheets representing 31 genera, 149 species as here recognized (or 151 

 by Prof Batons Fern List), and some twenty-two or twenty-three 

 hundred specimens. Many sheets of other vascular cryptogams have 

 been mounted and are nearly ready to add to the herbarium 



Besides these collections, there is a small one of ferns .from 

 rulney Hills, Southern India, presented in 1878 or '79 by Mrs Van 



Boston, Feb. 1881. 



G. E. D. 



26. A Silene with Pentamerous Ovary—The symmetry in the 



flower of the genus ^//^«^ is destroyed by the suppression of two 

 carpels in the gynoecmm (sepals 5, petals 5, stamens 2x5, pistils 3). 

 In a specimen of Stlene Pennsy/pamca, Michx. 1 have detected a 



/ 



luni- 



* 



permitted to ripen, would certainly have'opened"b7tenTeeth''' This 

 pod shows, if nothing else, how closely Silene and Lychnis are related- 

 so closely, m fact that if such a case as this were of frequent occur! 

 rence there Avould be little left to distinguish the two genera. 



Hoboken,Feb., 1881. Joseph Schrenk. 



^''r-^^^^^^^P^'"^^^^" Of Fleshy Pileate Fungi for the Herbar- 



—For all preparations of fungi, with the exception of those of 

 spores I use, as a supporting material, paper coated with gelatine, 

 and which I shall call • yiatm e-paper." This is prepared by dis- 



f / T'^l^"" author's preliminary remarks on collecting fungi, and will merelv 

 Il^eV al\\rtXsTsht;'r/ "°"^ Y ^^^^^ ^^--^tenltic .s'p;cimens she'd be' 



it:r:s::Ld?ndi\Tairbd'^ -^^ — — -^ 



