LINNEAN society of LONDON. 2 7 



The second period which I would mark out in the historj- of the 

 Society is that covered by Volumes x.-xvi. of the " Transactions," 

 extending from the year 1811 to the year 1833, Just as, from the 

 botanical point of view, the publications of the first period bear the 

 impress of Sir J E. Smith, so those of this second period are 

 dominated by liobert Brown. It is true that papers by him appeared 

 as late as 1851, but the sway which he held had before then passed 

 into other hands. 



It cannot, I think, be said that Robert Brown's best work ap- 

 peared in our " Transactions,'" chiefly for the reason that he, like 

 his botanical predecessors whom I have mentioned, was much 

 occupied with publication in book-form. For instance, the paper 

 on Kingia, which gives his discovery of the gymnospermous con- 

 dition of Cycada, Conifers, Ephedra, and Gnetum — one of the 

 most striking manifestations of his great ability — appeared, most 

 inappropriately, in the botanical appendix to the ' Narrative * of 

 Captain King's voyage, published in 1827, although it had actually 

 been read before this Society on November 1 and 15, 1825. We 

 have also to regret the loss of his equally important paper on the 

 plurality and development of the embryos in the seeds of Coniferae, 

 which was published in the " Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History '*' for 1844. On the other hand, we have his paper on the 

 Proteacese of Jussieu (1810) which is of interest, not only on 

 account of the actual subject-matter, but more especially because 

 it marks his adherence to the Natural System of classification, of 

 which he was, in fact, the apostle in this country. Then we have 

 his valuable ' Observations on the Natural History of Plants called 

 Compositse ' (vol. xii. 1818), in which, among other important 

 morphological points, he shows that a capitulum is merely a spike 

 with a shortened or even depressed axis ; he distinguishes between 

 the involucre and the perianth ; and demonstrates that the ovary 

 consists of two coherent carpels : the paper as a whole constituting 

 an admirable illustration of his exceptional skill in laying a solid 

 foundation of morphology upon which to erect a superstructure of 

 classification. Finally, I would mention his ' Observations on the 

 Organs and Mode of Fecundation in Orchideae and Asclepiadeae ' 

 (Trans., vol. xvi. 1833), which is probably the best of his more 

 physiological papers, and was a most important contribution to the 

 general question, being just then actively debated, as to the process 

 of fertilization in Phanerogams, especially with regard to the 

 development and destination of the pollen-tube, in that it gave a 

 demonstration of the process in plants having pollinia. The paper 

 is, moreover, of special interest as announcing the discovery of the 

 nucleus in the cells of plants. 



The only other botanical writer of note belonging to this period 

 is David Don, essentially a systematist, whose early papers are to 

 be found in Vols, xiii.-xvi. There is one definitely physiological 

 paper, that by Heyne on the ' Deoxidatiou of the Leaves of Btyo- 

 phyllum cah/cinum ' (vol. xi. 1815), in which he states that he had 

 tound the leaves to be acid in the morning and tasteless at noon j 



