96 BOTANICAL NE^S. 



ceutists. The arrnngement of tlie material seems to be not bnsed on any 

 evident system, wliicli renders the l)ook somewhat difficult of consultation ; 

 but it would be ungracious to complain of this, since the editor, Mr. J. C. 

 Brough, is stilted in the Preface to have been seriously ill during the pro- 

 gress of the book through the pi ess. 



Our obituary this month is unhappily a long one. Dr. F. A. W. 

 Miquel, Professor of Botany in the University of Utrecht, and Curator of 

 the Royal Herbarium at Levden, succumbed to an affection of the chest 

 in the end of last January. He ranked among the most distinguished 

 botanists of Europe, and the great advantages of the Leyden Herbarium 

 were turned to excellent account by him in the elucidation of the botany 

 of the East Indian Islands, Japan, and New Holland. The ' Annales Musei 

 Botanici Lugduno-Batavi,' commenced in lS'i3,and published in folio parts, 

 of which forty, forming lour volumes, have appeared, and the ' Flora Indiae 

 BataviB ' are his most important works; but Professor Miquel was the 

 author of Monographs of the Pipcracn-e, Ctjcadets, Ficus, Cacti, Cos/ia- 

 rina, etc., and of very numerous papers in tlie transactions of the learned 

 societies of the Continent, no less than lOS articles standing under his 

 name in the Royal Society's Catalogue. By his death science loses an 

 eminent votary, and the botanists of this and other lauds a fellow-worker 

 who was always ready to place the information wdiich he possessed at 

 their service. 



])r. P'ranz Lagger, of Freiburg, who paid much attention to the flora 

 of Switzerland, and added a i'tw species to it, died in the early part of the 

 year. 



Eugene Coemans died at Ghent in January last. He was a lay abbot, 

 but devoted himself to botanical studies. His earliest memoir was on 

 some critical Belgian Cryptogams, published in 1858; and for several 

 years he directed his attention to these plants, especially to the Fungi, 

 and published several systematic and structural pipers on that Order. 

 More recently he became engrossed with the elucidation of the fossil 

 plants of Belgium, and contributed several valuable papers to difl'erent 

 periodicals, besides accumulating an extensive series of notes and draw- 

 ings for a general work on the subject. These he has left to the Natural 

 History jMuscum of Belgium. The most important of his papers is the 

 description of a singular gymnospermous flora of Oetaceous age at 

 Hainault, which was noticed in this Journal (Vol. V. p. 182). His 

 memoirs on the genera Sp/ienop//i/llnm, Jininhiri/i, and Aderopltyllites, 

 cleared up the confusion into which these forms of foliage had got; and, 

 although at flrst he hehl them to be most probably phanerogamous plants, 

 he subsequently adopted the views of Air. Carruthers, and in our pages 

 published (Vol. VII. p. 337) his estimate of the classification and rela- 

 tion of those forms. His death is a great loss to science, especially to 

 science in Belgium. 



We also regret to record the death, in his forty-second year, of Mr. 

 T. W. Gissing, which took place at Wakefield ou December 28. Mr. 

 Gissing was the author of a 'Flora of Wakefield' (noticed in Vol. V. 

 p. 346), and has also contributed to our pages. 



Communications have been received from : — Prof. Thiselton Dyer, 

 A. G. More, Eev. J. M. Crombie, Rev. W. A. Leiiihton, Prof. Church, 

 A. W. Bennett, W. Carruthers, J. Sadler, C. Bailey, Miss Gifford, 

 J. Britten, etc. 



