158 Miscellaneous. 



salmon rather diminish than increase during their sojourn in rivers, 

 aud he illustrates this and other points of his subject by numerous 

 experiments and observations. 



2. " On the Geology of Roxburghshire." Part II. By David Milne, 

 Esq., — the conclusion of a very interesting report. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



MAIANTHEMUM BIFOLIUM. 



This very pretty plant, recorded as British in the ' Annals' for 

 January, is a rediscovery and not altogether new to the British 

 flora. It has been already figured and recorded as English, but a 

 long while ago. In Gerarde's ' Herbal,' 2nd book, 90th chap. p. 409, 

 will be found a very characteristic portrait of it under the name of 

 Monophyllum or One blade. He classes it with his Wintergreenes 

 (Pyrolce), and says " it growth in Lancashire in Dingley Wood, six 

 miles from Preston in Auldirnesse, and in Harwood near Blackburne 

 likewise." " It floureth in May, and the fruit is ripe in September." 

 Let the Lancashire botanists look out for it next spring. It is strange 

 that Gerarde's notice of it should have escaped our older botanists ; 

 and stranger still, that in the Linnsean Society's copy it is marked 

 " Convallaria bifolia " in Sir James E. Smith's own handwriting, 

 apparently without his having noticed the localities given for it be- 

 low. In the south of Norway it is very abundant in pine-woods on 

 a gneiss soil*, and should be looked for in similar situations in the 

 north of Britain. — Edward Forbes. 



DR. PATRICK NEILL. 



There are few whose claims to public commendation are stronger 

 than those of Dr. Neill, who has been one of the most useful, but 

 least ostentatious, of Edinburgh's citizens. At a late meeting of the 

 Caledonian Horticultural Society, Lord Murray proposed that the 

 members should at their first meeting in their new hall express their 

 sense of the obligations under which the Society lay to that gentle- 

 man for his distinguished and laborious services ; which was carried 

 by acclamation. In addition to this, it is proposed to request Dr. Neill 

 to sit for a bust, to be executed by John Steell, Esq., R.S.A. This 

 mark of approbation, however, should not be confined to the mem- 

 bers : the Doctor's services as a citizen of Edinburgh, and the in- 

 terest he has taken in every public and benevolent undertaking, en- 

 title him to a more general compliment. 



TO ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL COLLECTORS. 



Mr. William Gardener, Dundee, will prepare during the ensuing 

 summer " Botanical Parcels," each of which " will contain 500 spe- 

 cies of Scottish Phsenogamic and Cryptogamic plants, including as 

 many of the rarer species as possible, carefully selected, dried, named, 

 and localised ; and the charge, inclusive of printed labels, paper and 



* It is also a common plant in the neighbourhood of Berlin, where it 

 occurs in profusion in the Park on a sandy soil. — W. Francis. 



