LIXNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 5 



otherwise norinal plant ; (2) entire fronds of abnormally small 

 size characterized by the aposporous diaphanous tissue, which 

 is usually confined to the apices of the fronds ; (3) by simple 

 layering these have, without development of root-hairs, produced 

 prothalli ; (4) in July last this usually deciduous fern produced 

 six minute pinnatifid fronds at the base of a normal frond, whicli 

 persisted, and produced young plants from apogamie buds. 



The Vice-President in the Chair, and Prof. J . Bretland Farmer 

 contributed some critical remarks, to which Mr. Druery replied. 



Dr. A. B. Eendle, F.L.S., then gave a report of the recent 

 Congress, in which he was the Society's delegate: — 



The International Botanical Congress at Vienna in June last 

 was attended by more than 600 botanists from all parts of the 

 world. The most important work was that of the Conference on 

 Botanical Nomenclature, which met daily throughout the week. 

 The publication of Dr. Otto Kuntze's 'Eevisio Generum,' in 1891, 

 had brought to a head the discussion arising, partly, from a certain 

 vagueness in some of the articles of the Candollean code of laws 

 of 1867, and partly from a neglect, by some botanists, of the 

 principles of that code. The actual work of the Conference was 

 to discuss the various suggested amendments of, and additions to, 

 the articles of the Code of 1867, which had been correlated and 

 arranged in the 'Texte Synoptique' by Dr. Briquet, the official 

 reporter-general of the International Botanical Commission 

 appointed at the Paris Congress in 1900. The result is embodied 

 in a set of Eules which will shoi'tly be issued in English, Prench, 

 and German. The chief points of difference between the new 

 rules and the laws of 1867 are as follows: — 



In the first place a distinction is drawn between Eules and 

 Eecommendatious. The former are retroactive and deal with 

 more important points — names or forms of nomenclature which 

 are contrary to a rule and cannot be maintained. Eecommendatious 

 deal with points of secondary importance; and while names or 

 forms of nomenclature contrary to a recommendation are not to be 

 regarded as a model, they cannot be rejected. 



Por sake of uniformity the Congress adopted the terms Order 

 and Suborder in place of Cohort and Subcohort; thus Order ceases 

 to be synonymous with Famihj. The laws of 1867 gave no precise 

 date of departure for botanical nomenclature; the new code states 

 that botanical nomenclature begins with the 'Species Plantarum' 

 of Linnseus, ed. 1 (1753). Names of genera appearing in this 

 work may be associated with the descriptions which are given in 

 the 'Genera Plantarum,' ed. 5 (1754). To obviate the loss of 

 well-known generic names by a strict adherence to the law of 

 priority, a list of names, to be retained in all cases, was approved 

 by the Conference and will form an appendix to the new code. 

 The articles of the original code dealing with method of formation 

 of names have been made more precise and placed in the new code 



