590 proceedings: botanical society 



The fourteenth annual meeting of the Botanical Society of Washing- 

 ton was held at 1.30 p.m., October 23, 1914. The customary reports 

 were presented and approved and the following officers were elected for 

 the ensuing year: Dr. R. H. True, President; Mr. G. N. Collins, 

 Vice President; Prof. C. E. Chambliss, Recording Secretary; Dr.PER- 

 LEY Spaulding, Corresponding Secretary; Mr. H. C. Gore, Treasurer, 

 and Mr. W. E. Safford, Vice President to the Washington Academy of 

 Sciences. 



The ninetj^-ninth regular meeting of the Botanical Society of W^ash- 

 ington was held November 3, 1914 in the Cosmos Club. Forty-nine 

 members and three guests were present. Mr. Wilson Popenoe was 

 unanimously elected to membership. The scientific program w^as: 



Paul Popenoe, The date palm in antiquity (with lantern). The 

 speaker referred particularly to the influence of the date palm on the 

 religion of the Semitic peoples. Prized for the food and drink it fur- 

 nished, it was revered because of the mystery of sex emphasized by its 

 monoeciousness, and became identified with the primitive mother god- 

 dess of fertility. A sacred palm in a garden at Eridu, near the mouth 

 of the Euphrates river, is thought by many investigators to be the ori- 

 gin of the Tree of Life of the Garden of Eden, described in Genesis. 

 The culture of the palm was thoroughly known at a very early period, 

 the Babylonian inscriptions giving reason to believe that it was more 

 skillful 1900 years B.C. than it is in that region 1900 years A.D. 



W. E. Safford, The economic 'plants of ancient Peru. This paper 

 was based upon collections and observations made by the speaker while 

 cruising along the Peruvian and ChiHan coast, in 1887, and while acting 

 as Commissioner for the World's Columbian Exposition to Peru and 

 Bolivia, in 1891 to 1893. Prehistoric graves were opened at Caldera, 

 Iquique, Arica, the Rimac valley, Ancon, Chimbote, Truxillo, and the 

 vicinity of Payta. The material obtained is mainly in the Field Colum- 

 bian Museum at Chicago and the United States National Museum. 

 In addition to objects of ethnological interest many articles were found 

 illustrating the ethnobotany of ancient Peru. Not only were seeds, 

 seed-pods, dried fruits, leaves, and tubers found, but beautiful represen- 

 tations of many of the food plants in terra-cotta, in the form of funeral 

 vases, were discovered in graves near the coast, especially at Chimbote 

 and Truxillo. Among these were a number not included in Wittmack's 

 list published in Reis and Stuebel's great work "Das Todtenfeld von 

 Ancon." Beautiful models in terra-cotta of the tubers of Solanum. tu- 

 berosum were found, also of the fruits of Solanum, 7nuricatum and Lu- ' 

 cuma ohovota, and most interesting of all the almond-like kernels of 

 Caryocar amygdaUforme R. & P., easily distinguished by their pro- 

 truding recurved embryo. Another interesting object was a terra-cotta 

 vase representing the roots of the yahutia {Xanthosoma sp.). The collec- 

 tions include specimens of Phaseolus vulgaris and Phaseolus lunatus, a 

 gourd full of peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) and models of the same on 

 terra-cotta vases; mandioca roots and models of the latter; quantities 

 of maize and models of the same on funeral vases; bags of coca leaves 



