fit SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Ferns of Borneo.* — H. Winkler gives an account of the flora and 

 plant-geography of south-east Borneo, and includes a list of ninety- 

 eight ferns determined by Lauterbach, and seven species of Selaginella 

 determined by Hieronymus, four of which are new and described at 

 great length. 



Ferns of the Kermadec Islands.! — R. B. Oliver includes in his 

 account of the vegetation of the Kermadec Islands a list of the ferns. 

 These are thirty-three in number, together with five Lycopodiaceae. 

 Among the most interesting are Cyathea Mihiei Hook, and C. kerma- 

 decmsis, a new species which has hitherto been confounded with C. Miinet, 

 but has a much taller (60-70 ft.) and more slender stem, from which 

 the dead fronds fall off completely, leaving a clean scar. With very few 

 exceptions the species occur in New Zealand and elsewhere. The ferns 

 are mostly found in the wet forests. The author gives some ecologic 

 notes about them. Owing to the introduction of goats the indigenous 

 plants are now very rare. 



Bryophyta. 

 (By A. Gepp.) 



Inter-relationships of the Hepaticae.J — F. Cavers, continuing his 

 account of the inter-relationships of the Bryophyta, discusses the group 

 of the acrogynous Jungermanniales. He first passes under review the 

 chief morphological characters of the group, with special reference to 

 the wealth of parallel developments, which is one of its most striking 

 features. Thus he discusses the various types of leaves and perianths, 

 the development of the marsupial sac and of the sporogonium, as found 

 in different genera. He offers a scheme of classification in which he 

 raises Schiffner's eight sub-families to the status of families and briefly 

 defines them. From a study of the inter-relationships of the Acrogynae, 

 he finds evidence that they form a monophyletic group ; and he thinks 

 that the following are relatively primitive gametophytic characters : — 

 Leaves symmetrically bilobed, and either flat or slightly folded ; the 

 presence of underleaves ; archegonia borne on the main axis ; perianth 

 free from involucre, and either cylindrical or trigonous from the fusion 

 of three flat bracts : protonema filamentous. Also he finds on the other 

 hand that the following may be regarded as advanced or specialized 

 characters — the complete absence of lobing from the leaf, or, on the 

 contrary, its division into several deep lobes, or its division into two 

 lobes of very unequal size ; the absence of underleaves ; the restriction 

 of the archegonia to special short branches ; the fusion of perianth with 

 involucre ; lateral or dorsiventral flattening of the perianth, and the 

 development of wings on its exterior ; discoid protonema ; and, finally, 

 various elaborations such as the formation of pitchers, paraphylls, mar- 

 supia, etc. Many of these specialized characters have arisen independ- 

 ently in different lines of affinity, and are to be classed as parallel 

 developments. In the phylogenetic scheme figured on page 299, the 



* Engler's Bot. Jahrb xliv. (1910) pp. 497-571. 



t Trans. Proc. New Zealand Inst., xlii. (1910) pp. 118-175. 



X New Phytologist, ix. (1910) pp. 269-301 (figs.). 



