336 Obituary. 



characters of the ovule, such as absence or presence of integu- 

 ments, and their number when present. 



In a more recent paper, entitled " The Egg of Plants considered 

 as a basis of Classification,"* he suggested a system of arrange- 

 ment of the whole plant-world, in which, as before, the details of 

 the structure and development of the ovule are regarded as supply- 

 ing the most important characters for the subdivision of the 

 groups of Angiosperms. But his system was far too rigid, and 

 indicated a want of appreciation of the relative value of characters : 

 moreover they were hampered by a novel and difficult terminology. 



Much of Van Tieghem's work was published in the Annales 

 des Sciences Naturelles, in the botanical editorship of which he 

 succeeded Decaisne in 1882. continuing up till the time of his 

 death, and the long series of volumes, rich in the results of his 

 own work and that of his pupils, will form a lasting monument 

 of his services to botanical science. His versatility is shown by 

 several papers of fundamental importance in a very different field, 

 the morphology and physiology of the phycomycetous Fungi. In 

 1873, with his pupil, G. Le Monnier, he published a lengthy com- 

 munication entitled " Eecherches sur les Mucorinees," a mono- 

 graphic account of a little-known group ; this was followed by 

 two other papers on the same subject in 1875 and 1876. Among 

 his services to general botany were his Traite de Botanique, which, 

 appeared in 1884, and in an enlarged edition, containing 1885 

 pages (1891), and the smaller Elements de Botanique (1886-88), 

 which also passed through several editions. 



Van Tieghem had been for many years Professor at the Paris 

 Museum of Natural History and a Member of the Institute ; he 

 was also one of the most long-standing foreign Members of our own 

 Linnean Society, having been elected in 1885. He was elected to 

 the honorary fellowship of the Koyal Microscopical Society in 

 1879. 



* Ann. Sci. Nat., ser. 8, xiv. (1901) pp. 213-390. 



