NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, ETC. 233 



1092. 



There is also a noteworthy well-illustrated memoir on Throwing Weapons, by 

 C. W. Liiders. 



The Italian Botanical Society invites the botanists of every nationality to 

 an International Botanical Congress, to be held in Genoa from September 4th to 

 nth of the present year. Judging from the circular, this will form part of a great 

 International Congress of " the Societies of Geography and of Natural Science," by 

 which Genoa is solemnising " the fourth centenary of the greatest geographical 

 discovery of all time — the work of her renowned citizen, the immortal Christopher 

 Columbus." It will also be the occasion of the inauguration of the new Botanical 

 Institute, which Mr. Thomas Hanbury has built and presented to the University of 

 the town. Italian botanists cordially invite their colleagues of every nation to give 

 the Congress an essentially cosmopolitan character, " for above all things it aims at 

 strengthening, by the powerful influence of Science, the bonds of fraternity between 

 nations." All enquiries and communications concerning the Botanical Congress 

 should be addressed to Professor O. Penzig, Royal University, Genoa. 



After many failures, the horticulturists of Kew have succeeded in growing a 

 young " double cocoa-nut palm " [Lodoicea seychelliirum), which was placed for 

 exhibition in the Victoria House last month. The plant is a native of the Seychelles, 

 and very rarely seen in cultivation. The germination of the double cocoa-nut occupies 

 nearly two years, and its attainment to maturity is very slow. Its peculiar mode 

 of germination is a source of great difficulty in cultivation. The radicle grows down 

 from the large heavy seed in the form of a stout tap-root, carrying with it the stem- 

 bud or plumule enclosed in the sheath of the cotyledon. By the ultimate splitting of 

 the latter the plumule is set free and able to ascend. If this long and slowly- 

 growing process be injured success cannot be expected. The trunk of the adult tree 

 may reach 100 feet in height, though scarcely a foot in diameter. The male and 

 female flowers are borne on separate individuals. The immense fruits average 40 lbs. 

 in weight ; they contain, within a thick fibrous husk, one, two, or sometimes three 

 large nuts, with hard and thick black shells, each divided about half-way down into 

 two lobes. Before the discovery of the Seychelles islands, in 1743, considerable 

 mystery attached to these nuts, which were often found floating in the Indian Ocean 

 (hence the name " Coco de Mer "), and highly prized by the natives of the 

 Archipelago. Rumphius, in his Herbarium Amboinense (1750), speaks of the nut as 

 " hujus miri miraculi naturae, quod princeps est omnium marinarum rerum, quae 

 rarae habentur." It is not, he says, a terrestrial fruit which has happened to fall 

 into the sea and thus become petrified, as Garcias ab Orta would persuade us, but a 

 fruit actually growing in the sea, the tree being hidden from the human eye. He 

 mentions some curious fables in connection with it, and says there are many more 

 not worth the telling. 



The new part of the Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society contains 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins' interesting paper on the " Further Discovery of Coal at 

 Dover," to which we alluded last month. The Professor begins by expressing 

 astonishment at the incredulity with which the discovery has hitherto been received 

 in many scientific circles; but considering that he had never exhibited to any learned 

 society the specimens on which his assertions were based, until the recent meeting 

 in Manchester, we think there was good reason to suspend judgment. 



For the first time since 1836 the Zoological Society's Gardens in London have 

 no specimens of Girafte. Owing to the closing of the Soudan none have been 



