OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



159 



Jacob Bigelow, M. D., . . President. 

 Edward Everett, Lli. D., Vice-President. 



Asa Gray, M. D., Corresponding Secretary. 



Augustus A. Gould, M. D., Recording Secretary. 



J. Ingersoll Bowditch, . Treasurer. 



Henry J. Bowditch, M. D., Librarian and Cabinet- Keeper. 



The Standing Committees were appointed as follows : — 



Riimford Committee. 

 Eben N. Horsford, Joseph Lovering, 



Daniel Tbeadwell, Francis C. Lowell, 



Morrill Wyman. 



Committee on the Library. 

 A. A. Gould, D, H. Storer, U. A. Boyden. 



Committee of Publication. 

 Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, W. C. Bond. 



Three hundred and tAventy-first meeting. 



August 8, 1849. — Quarterly Meeting. 



The President in the chair. 



The Corresponding Secretary read letters of acceptance from 

 Dr. Joseph Leidy, of Philadelphia, and Professor Charles B. 

 Adams, of Amherst College. 



Professor Gray gave some account of Argyroxiphium, a 

 remarkable genus of Compositac, belonging to the mountains 

 of the Sandwich Islands ; of which a second species was ob- 

 tained by the naturalists of the United States Exploring Ex- 

 pedition under Captain Wilkes. Dr. Gray thinks that 



" The genus should be referred to the division Madiese (a group 

 which belongs entirely to the western side of America, principally to 

 California, and of which the radical leaves of some Californian species 

 exhibit a somewhat similar silky covering) ; on account of the nearly 

 obsolete pappus of the ray-achenia, and their inclosure in the involute 

 scales of the involucre, and because there is an inner series of scales 

 interposed between the ray-flowers and those of the disk. It has been 

 remarked that, when a genus of two or more species is peculiar to a 



