LIXXEAN SOCIETY OF LOXDOX. Ixv 



persevering elaboration of minute details, although she must jield 

 to the French in respect of clearness and conciseness of methodical 

 exposition. Her speculative tendencies are well known ; and the 

 great impulse given to them since the spread of " Darw'inismus " 

 appears to have thrown systematic biology still further into the 

 background ; the sad events of the last twelvemonth have also 

 temporarily suspended or greatly interfered with the peaceful course 

 of science. Thus the zoological works contained in the lists I have 

 received are almost all dated in 1868 or 1869, and have been 

 already analyzed in the reports of TTiegmann's ' Archiv ' and in the 

 5th and 6th vols, of the ' Zoological Record,' and the principal ones 

 relating to exotic zoology wUl have to be referred to further on. 

 In Systematic Botany also but little of importance has been pub- 

 lished within the last three years, beyond the great 'Flora BrasUiensis,' 

 which, since the death of Dr. v. Martins, has been actively proceeded 

 with under the direction of Dr. Eichler, and to which I shall recur 

 under the head of South America. Eohrbach has published a 

 carefully worked out conspectus of the difficult genus Silene, and, in 

 the ' Linuaea,' a synopsis of Lychnideae ; and Bcickeler, also in the 

 ' Linnaea,' is describing the Cyperacese of the herbarium of Berlin — 

 a work very unsatisfactory, considering the detail in which it is 

 carried out, as it takes no notice whatever of the numerous pubhshed 

 species not there represented, nor of any stations or information 

 relating to those dgscribed other than what are supplied by that 

 herbarium. It is not a monograph, but a collection of detached 

 materials for a monograph. 



V. Switzerland. 



Switzerland comprises the loftiest and most extensive mountain- 

 range of which the biology has been weU investigated — the Alps, 

 which have lent their name to characterize the vegetation and other 

 physical features of mountains generally when attaining or ap- 

 proaching to the limits of eternal snows. The relations of this 

 alpine vegetation, both in its general character due to climatological 

 and other physical causes, and in its geographical connexion with 

 other floras, have been frequently the subject of valuable essays, 

 several of which I have mentioned on former occasions ; and it is 

 most desirable that the results obtained should be verified by or 

 contrasted with those which might be derived from zoological data, 

 and more particularly by the observation of insects and terrestrial 

 mollusca. As a first step, it is necessary that the plants and animals 

 of the country should be accurately defined and classed in harmony 



