^6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



quarter of a century forms au integral part. With widened 

 powers and an ampler Held for the exercise of his administrative 

 skill, Dr, Treub, as " Directeur van Landbouw," is now in charge 

 of this important State department. 



But in spite of the engrossing nature of his official duties and 

 of the exacting character and extraordinary amount of his 

 administrative work, Dr. Treub has found time to undertake much 

 original research, and to bring to completion a large number of 

 scientific studies of great importance and value. Among the more 

 notable of these have been the following : — 



His early work on the meristem of the root in Monocotyledons 

 and in the higher Pteridophytes (1876-78) is an elaborate inves- 

 tigation in which a wide view is taken of the questions of affinity 

 involved. In his works on the nucleus (1878-80), Treub first 

 proved the occurrence of multinucleate cells (bast-fibres and lati- 

 ciferous tubes) in the higher plants, and demonstrated the process 

 of fragmentation ( = amitosis). His joint paper with Mellink on 

 the embrj^o-sac (1880) though short was a valuable contribution 

 to fundamental questions of morphology then much disputed. 



From the time of his appointment to Buitenzorg all Ti'eub's 

 principal work has appeared in the '• Annales du Jardin Botanique," 

 a splendid publication of which he has long been the editor. 

 Beginning in 1882 with his classical investigation of the pollen- 

 sac, ovule and embryo of the Cycads, and of the remarkable 

 embryology of the parasitic family Loranthaceae, he went on to 

 equally striking researches of biological interest, on the extra- 

 ordinar}^ myrmecophilous plant Myrmecodia, and on the pitchers 

 of the epiphyte Dischidia, and about the same time he described a 

 new category of climbing plants (Hook-climbers, e. g. Ancistrodadus). 

 From 1882 to 1884 he continued his investigations of the ovule 

 and embryo in a number of peculiar types, and in the latter year 

 he began the publication of a series of studies of the most funda- 

 mental importance on the Lycopodiaceae, discovering and inves- 

 tigating in the most complete manner the prothallus and embryo 

 in a number of tropical species of Lycopodiura, and thus filling 

 what had until then been one of the most serious gaps in our 

 knowledge of the Higher Cryptogams. This work extended to 

 1890, and in the following year Treub, returning to the morphology 

 of Flowering Plants, astonished the Botanical world by the 

 discovery, in Casiumna, of a totally new method of fertilisation, 

 the pollen-tube penetrating the tissues at the base of the ovule 

 (chalazogamy) instead of entering by the micropyle. 



Another important series of investigations by our medallist has 

 elucidated various cases of parthenogenesis or apogamy, in the 

 parasite Balanopliora, in a species of Fig, and in the Urticaceous 

 genus Elatostema (1898-1905). 



In Physiology, Treub's work on the role of hydi'ocyanic acid as 

 the first product of the assimilation of nitrogen by the green plant 

 (1896 and 1904) has been of fundamental importauce. No other 

 Botanist has ever made such splendid use of the opportunities 



