civ GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



with reference to the recent conclusions of Professor Stras- 

 burger, of Jena, and the attendant question of the derivative 

 origin of forms and organs. The same diligent worker has 

 also published during the year a sixth volume of the " Flora 

 Australiensis," including the orders from Thymelece to Ama- 

 ryllidece. In this he Avas aided by Baron von Mtiller, of Mel- 

 bourne, Victoria. 



An English translation of the " Descriptive and Analytical 

 Botany" of Le Maout and Decaisne has been made by Mrs. 

 J. D. Hooker, with modifications, additions, and an appendix 

 by Dr. Hooker, thus supplying a want that has long been 

 felt by English students of general botany. Dr. J. G. Baker, 

 besides a revision of the Scillece and Chlorogalece in the Jour- 

 nal of the Linnaean Society, has edited the Compositm for 

 Eichler's (Martins') " Flora Brasiliensis," and W. P. Hiern has 

 published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosoph- 

 ical Society a complete and extended monogra^^h of the Ebe- 

 nacece. 



The seventeenth and final volume of De Candolle's "Pro- 

 dromus " has recently appeared, completing the dicotyledo- 

 nous orders, with the exception of the Artocar'pim, and so far 

 finishing the work begun by the father fifty years ago. The 

 entire class of monocotyledonous plants, however, still re- 

 mains untouched. Little else in systematic botany has ap- 

 peared on the Continent beyond some articles in the jour- 

 nals as by Otto Boeckeler, in " Linnaea," upon the Cyper- 

 acem; and by Dr. Wawra, in the "Flora," upon the flora of 

 the Hawaian Islands. Dr. J. Miiller, of Geneva, however, has 

 contributed to the "Flora Brasiliensis" a thick fascicle, con- 

 taining two tribes {Phyllanthece and Crotonem) of the order 

 JEupthorhiacece ; and Maximowicz and Herder, of St. Peters- 

 burg, have continued their contributions to the botany of 

 Eastern Asia, including general revisions of Lespedeza and 

 some other genera. 



In cryptogamic and physiological botany, Dr. E. Bornet 

 gives in the " Annales des Sciences Naturelles " the results of 

 his researches into the composition of lichens, apparently es- 

 tablishing as a fact, what had before been suggested by De 

 Bary and partially developed by Schwendener, that lichens of 

 every description are of a composite character and formed of 

 filamentous, fruit -bearing tissue parasitic upon green cells, 



