Vegetable Physiology for the Year 1836. 383 



pearecl; and Valentin of Berne* has given a critical view of 

 the results of the principal physiological labours belonging to 

 the year 1835; there is no want of competition, therefore, in 

 works of this class, and it is only to be hoped that no one 

 will go so far as to make up reports out of year's reports. The 

 author of the present report designs to continue his labour in 

 future years, and, circumstances permitting, will extend it to 

 systematical botany also. 



Convenient as it is to science that most of the learned so- 

 cieties now publish more or less copious notices of the labours 

 of their members, it must still be remarked that short reports 

 on the contents of several memoirs, read at the meetings of 

 these societies, often appear in print, until at last, too fre- 

 quently after a very long interval, the entire memoirs are 

 published. Since however these short reports often contain 

 but very incomplete statements, we have in many cases 

 thought it necessary to wait the appearance of the original 

 paper itself. 



On the Symmetry, Arrangement, and Characteristics of the 

 Nature of Plants, 



The new edition of Link's Elementa Philosophise Botanica?, 

 which appeared last year, begins with the remark that natural 

 bodies, when in a perfect state, possess a more or less sym- 

 metrical figure. In p. 30 he adduces proof that the entire 

 plant or its parts are symmetrical, yet differing a little from 

 exact symmetry. The plant is a compound organic body ; 

 each individual part is almost quite symmetrical, its combina- 

 tion however often not so, for many exterior circumstances 

 hinder or accelerate the origin and growth of branches. A 

 variation from the symmetrical form often takes place when 

 superincumbent parts appear to retard complete develop- 

 ment. 



A small tract by Mohlf treats more copiously on the sym- 

 metry of vegetables. It is there shown that most organs of 

 plants tend more or less evidently to symmetrical formation. 

 The concentric, symmetrical, and the diaphorical mode of 

 formation is in the first place distinguished, and then specially 

 exemplified in a great number of plants. The structure of 

 the lower order of plants is conceived extremely well, and 

 the author observes that a correct notion of those plants in 

 which stem and leaf are separated, can only be attained by a 



• Vide Valentin's Report . fur Anat. und Physiol., &c. Berlin, 1837, 

 vol.i. p. 1-77. 



f On the Symmetry of Plants (an Inaugural Dissertation). Tubingen, 

 1836, 8vo. 



