20 tEOCEEDlNGS OF THE 



testify to his indefatigable industr)' audhis mauy-sided attainments. 

 If I may give prominence to what appeals most directly to myself, 

 I would mention two short papers (vol. ii. 1794) in which Lindsay 

 gives an 'Acconnt of the Germination and liaising of Ferns from 

 Seed.' "Without, apparent!}-, any knowledge of Ehrhart's similar 

 work in 1788, he describes and figures the development of the pro- 

 thallium which he speaks of as ' a membranous substance like 

 some small Lichens or Liverworts for which it might readily be 

 mistaken.' Failing to detect the discontinuity between the pro- 

 thallium and the young Fern, he oveiiooked the reproductive organs, 

 which were not discovered until half-a-century later by Naegeli and 

 Suminski. Nor did Lindsay confine his attention to Ferns, but 

 germinated also the spores of Lycopodhan cernuum, of Bryum 

 cesjpiticium, and of Marcliantia, though these observations are un- 

 fortunately not described in detail. The value of Lindsay's com- 

 munications seems to have been fairly appreciated at the time, since 

 Sir J. E. Smith appended a note to the second of them, in which 

 he says that ' the foregoing observations of Mr. Lindsay are highly 

 worthy of attention, as confirming the Hedwigian theory of the 

 fructification of Mosses.' 



It is somewhat remarkable that these volumes contain practically 

 nothing relating to the anatomy of plants, nor any physiological work 

 other than Townson's ' Objections against the Perceptivity of Plants 

 so far as is evinced by their external motions ' (vol. ii. 1794), raised 

 in opposition to Pereival, who held (Trans. Lit. Phil. Soc. Manchester, 

 ii. 1785) that the movements of plants are acts of volition and 

 imply sensation. The lack of ])hysiological papers is no doubt dne 

 to the fact that work in this branch of biology was recognized by 

 the Eoyal Society and published in the " Philosophical Transactions." 

 Had the Eoyal Society's interpretation of the term ' Natural 

 Knowledge ' been but a little narrower, doubtless the Linnean 

 Society would have had the honour of receiving and publishing the 

 papers in which Thomas Andrew Knight, whose name is one of the 

 most famous on our roll, recounts his classical researches on geo- 

 tropism (1806), and his discovery of the negative heliotropism of 

 the tendrils of Vitw and Ampelopsis (1812). As it is, all that we 

 possess of Knight's work is comparatively unimportant : a paper on 

 Variegation, in the ninth volume (1808), and another on the species 

 of Strawberries in the twelfth volume (1818) of our " Transactions." 



The Zoology of this period resembles the Botany in being almost 

 exclusively descriptive or systematic, but it has a more decided bent 

 in the direction of Natural History, or, in modern phrase, of 

 Eionomics. In the early volumes Shaw and Markwick are the chief 

 contributors ; but they contain also the first papers of Kirby, of 

 Maton, and of Montagu, whose names subsequently appear with 

 greater frequency. Curtis's interesting ' Observations on Aphides 

 and their relation to Honey-dew ' occur in Vol. vi., a good specimen 

 of sound work in Natu.ral History, only excelled as such by Huber's 

 remarkable paper on the Humble-Eees, in the same volume, a paper 

 which has become classical. 



