1855.] Linnean Society. 387 



last Anniversary, the grounds on which the Council recommended 

 the same honour to be conferred upon those eminent persons whom 

 you have recently elected to fill the vacancies which had occurred 

 since that period. Those vacancies having been all produced by the 

 decease of botanists, three persons were selected to succeed them, 

 who were distinguished for their attainments in that branch of 

 natural history. 



M. Hofmeister's contributions to botanical science are confined to 

 physiological researches, and these are of the highest interest and 

 value, having been always conducted with the greatest skill and judg- 

 ment, and illustrating the most difficult and obscure facts in vegetable 

 embryogeny. The results of these observations are so well known in 

 this country through the correct translations of Professor Henfrey, 

 published in the ' Annals of Natural History,' and the Reports of the 

 British Association, that I need do no more than allude to them here. 

 The most elaborate and important is his work on the Reproductive 

 Organs of Lycopodiacece, and on the Embryogeny of ConifenB, pub- 

 lished at Leipsic, a quarto volume, illustrated by 33 beautifully 

 executed plates. M, Hofmeister has also published Essays on the 

 Fecundation of (Enothera, and on the Reproductive Organs of Equi- 

 setum and of the Ferns, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of 

 Science of Saxony, and others on the Embryo of Phsenogams, &c. 

 Besides throwing great light on these subjects and developing many 

 new facts, M. Hofmeister has displayed, in all his researches, a 

 thorough knowledge of his subject, and a rare delicacy and skill in 

 microscopical investigation, which have, in comparatively few years, 

 raised him to the rank of a proficient in physiological botany. 



M. Planchon is the " Aide " Professor of Botany at Montpelier. 

 He commenced the study of this science under Professor Dunal of 

 that place, and in 1844 published his first essay on the Origin and 

 Development of Arilli, and on the Ovules of Veronica and Avicennia. 

 This treatise, which I believe was his inaugural dissertation on pre- 

 senting himself for the degree of Doctor in Science at the University 

 where he now holds his Professorship, at once established for him at a 

 very early age, the reputation of a talented and promising botanist. 

 But M. Planchon may be said to have a peculiar claim upon our 

 sympathy and good will, as he ten years since accepted the office of 

 Curator of Sir William Hooker's Herbarium at Kew, where he de- 

 voted himself for five years indefatigably to the study of systematic 

 botany. A series of most important memoirs have from time to 

 time proceeded from his pen, consisting for the most part of mono- 

 graphs of little-known genera and small families of plants contained in 



