DR. JOITN FOTTTEEGTLL A^^D TFIS FETENDS 50 



already referred in the letter ot the previous September, " which 

 inclines me to conjecture he has taken some afront which if he hath 

 I am intirely inocent & ignorant which wu}'- & he should candidly 

 & friendly advertised me thereof." With Collinson Fothergiirs 

 [)ersonal relations, which began about 1740, were for many yeai-s of 

 the most cordial nature, as is shown in the " Account " published 

 anonymously two years after his death as '' a Letter to a Friend " : 

 in this it is noted that Collinson had "a vast treasure of dried speci- 

 mens of plants," of whose subsequent history we have no trace. 



As w^e said at the beginning of this notice, our remarks must be 

 mainly confined to the botanical interest of the book ; but this forms 

 only a portion, and that not the largest portion, of its contents. We 

 have indeed seldom met with a volume which, while never unduly 

 discursive, appeals to so many various interests : the members of 

 Dr. Fox's own profession will ap^^reciate the chapters which deal with 

 FothergilFs work as a physician and with his medical friends — some, 

 e. g. Lettsom, themselves connected with botany ; historians will like 

 the chapters wdiich deal with Fothergill's intimate relations with 

 America, both before and after the War of Independence, and with 

 Benjamin Franklin ; the chapters relating to the Society of Friends, 

 especially that on Acworth School, should interest a wider circle than 

 the members of that body ; those on his pioneer work as a philan- 

 thropist and social reformer and on his other scientific interests afford 

 evidence of Fothergill's energy and breadth of view: there is an account 

 jilso of " Home Life in London " from the MS. journal from the diary 

 of a niece who visited Fothergill in Harpur Street in 1769-70. The 

 book, which has portraits and other illustrations, ends with a careful 

 and sympathetic appreciation of Fothergiirs character ; and there is 

 of course an excellent index, from which how^ever the Upton garden 

 is omitted. 



Thalassiioplnjfa and the Suhnerial Transmiqrafion. By A. H. 

 Church, M.A. Botanical Memoii-s. No. 3. Oxford University 

 Press, 1919. 95 pp. Price Zs. Qd. net. 



In" this remarkable treatise Dr. Church expresses his views as 

 to the marine origin of all land vegetation. In a previous memoir — • 

 The Bvilding of an Autotrophic Flagellate (noticed in this Journal 

 for 1919, p. 288) — he prepared the way by showing that Life itself 

 must have originated solely from the ions of sea-water, and he 

 indicated the inevitable steps b}^ which the resultant unicelkilar 

 organisms of the Plankton Epoch Avere developed and acquired those 

 fixed cytological cliaracters which all subsequent cells have inherited. 

 Autotrophic plant-cells those early organisms mostly were ; but with 

 them were associated animal derivatives. In the present memoir 

 the story is carried forward ; and it is shown how after long ages, 

 when the ever-rising sea -bottom had become elevated to within a 

 hundred fathoms of the surface of the all-enveloping ocean, and 

 thus had afforded a safe and convenient anchorage to both plants 

 and animals to settle on, the second or Benthic Epoch began. And 

 now for the first time multicellular sessile algae (and animals) came 



