I ER BARIUM,)) 



Botanical Gazette. 



Vol. VI. 



OCTOBER, 1881. 



No. 10. 



Editorial. — The Monthly Index, published at lo Spruce St., 

 New York, is an exceedingly convenient publication. In it we have 

 each month a complete classified list of the periodical literature of 

 every department of thought, except fiction. Looking under the ap- 

 propriate heading a botanist can find all that has been published the 

 previous month relating to his own science, and can thus procure what- 

 ever is of special interest. 



Sir John Lu brock, in his inaugural address as presiding officer of 

 the recent meeting of the British Association, made the following remarks 

 in illustrationof the progress of the Science of Botany in the last half cen- 

 tury: "Some of the most fascinating branches of botany — morphology, 

 histology, and physiology — scarcely existed before 1830. In the two 

 former branches the discoveries of von Mohl are pre-eminent. He 

 first observed cell-division in 1835, and detected the ])resence of 

 starch in chlorophyll-corpuscles in 1837, while he first described proto- 

 plasm, now so familiar to us, at least by name, in 1846. In the same 

 vear Amici discovered the existence of the embryonic vesicle in the 

 embryo-sac. The existence of sexual reproduction in the lower plants 

 was doubtful, or at least doubted by some eminent authorities, as re- 

 cently as 1853, when the actual process of fertilization m the common 

 bladderwrack of our shores was observed by Thuret, while the repro- 

 duction of the larger fungi was first worked out by de Bary in 

 1863. As regards lichens, Schwendener proposed, in 1869, the start- 

 ling theory, now however accepted by some of the highest authorities, 

 that lichens are not autonomous organisms, but commensal associa- 

 tions of a fungus parasitic on an alga. With reference to the higher 

 Cryptogams it is hardly too much to say that the whole of our exact 

 knowledge of their life history has been obtained during the last half 

 century. Thus in the case of the ferns the male organs, or antheridia, 

 were first discovered by Nageli in 1844, and the archegonia, or female 

 organs, by Suminski, in 1848. The early stages in the development 

 of the mosses were worked out by Valentine in 1833. Lastly, the 

 principle of alternations of generations in plants was discovered by 

 Hofmeister. This eminent naturalist also, in 185 1-4, jiointed out the 

 homologies of the reproductive processes in mosses, vascular crypto- 

 gams, gymnosperms and angiosperms. 



Baron Fekd. von Mueller has sent to Kew Gardens a living 

 specimen of his recently described Australian Cycad, Macrozamia 

 Moorci. The stem sent is four feet high, five and a half feet in cir- 

 cumference, and weighs six hundred pounds. Specimens have been 

 seen twenty feet high and six feet four inches in circumference, with 



