24 PEOCEEDINGS 01" THE 



No one can look back in the most casual way without recalling 

 several exceptionally important papers that occupied our atten- 

 tion. The various divisions of science witliin the province of 

 the Society have supplied subjects of investigation. In Sys- 

 tematic Botany we have had the important memoir on the genus 

 Ficus by Dr. King, embodying the results of much original ob- 

 servation, for which the author had exceptioual opportunities in 

 the large tropical garden at Calcutta under his care. The study 

 of the living plants has led him to adopt a classification based 

 upon the difiFerent kinds of flowers wliich occur in the genus, and 

 which greatly modifies our estimate of the species of Ficus. Mr. 

 H. N. Ridley laid before us a monograph of the genus Lijjaris, 

 in which he carefully revised the work of his predecessors, and 

 described no less than 'one hundred and ten species, of which a 

 considerable number were new to science. 



In Geographical Botany we have had Dr. Trimen's thorough 

 revision of the original materials for the Flora of Ceylon, the 

 plants collected two centuries ago by Hermann, on which Lin- 

 naeus constructed his ' Flora Zeylanica.' The acquaintance Dr. 

 Trimen has made with the plants of Ceylon, during his residence 

 in that island as Director of the Grardens at Peradeniya, fitted 

 him to undertake the critical exranination of this historical col- 

 lection, and enabled him to clear up difficulties and misappre- 

 hensions that have hitherto been connected with some of the 

 Linnean species. The short paper on the Barberries of Japan 

 by our young member Mr. Tokutaro Ito introduced us to an 

 oriental who, on his own account as well as on account of his 

 accomplished relatives, we welcomed as a fitting representative 

 of a people that had made considerable progress in the critical 

 knowledge of the indigenous flora of that country, even when 

 they were cut off from all intercourse with the Western nations. 

 Several papers have dealt with the vegetation of different regions 

 of Africa, a continent that has supplied the larger number of new 

 plants of recent years. Mr. Mitten described the Mosses and Liver- 

 worts collected by our late Fellow, Bishop Hannington, whose 

 sad fate, i>till fresh in our memories, cut short a life full of the 

 brightest promise for the high work to which he had devoted 

 himself, as well as to science, to which he was warmly devoted. 

 Prof. Oliver submitted to us an account of the plants collected 

 by Mr. Johnston in his Kilimanjaro expedition ; and Mr. Baker 

 continued his exposition of the novelties that had reached him 

 from Madagascar. The little oceanic island of Diego Grarcia 

 contains a limited flora which the waves have brought to it from 

 distant continents, as Mr. Hemsley showed in his short commu- 

 nication regarding a collection of plants from that island. In 

 Morphological Botany Dr. Masters communicated his studies 

 on the conformation of the flower of Ci/pripedium, tracing, chiefly 

 by the arrangement of the tibro-vascular bundles, its affinities 

 to the normal type of the monocotyledoaous flower. Sir John 



