254 LIXNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



Horsfield and Waliicli ; the Ferns of J. Smith, and the Mosses 

 and Liverworts of Wilson and Hampe ; besides other collections. 

 The separation from the great Library at Bloomsbury threatened 

 to be a serious drawback, but the Government had liberally 

 provided funds to obviate this difficulty, and some 8000 volumes 

 now form a good nucleus of reference to workers. The Treasury 

 have also consented to the erection of a separate building for 

 specimens preserved in spirit, a most necessar}^ and desirable 

 measure. Passing to Kew Gardens, mention was made of Miss 

 North's presentation of 615 oil paintings, illustrative of phases of 

 vegetation, taken by herself in the eastern and western hemi- 

 spheres. The late Mr. G. C. Joad's Herbarium of European 

 plants, the Rev. W. A. Leighton's Lichens, and Mr. H. C. Watson's 

 Herbarium, have been recently added. The Cryptogamic collections 

 have now been brought together and their arrangement improved. 

 A series illustrating the diseases of plants is a desideratum. The 

 great work, ' Genera Plantarum,' wherein Mr. Bentham and Sir 

 J. D. Hooker had laboured for the last tw^enty years, was now well 

 towards its termination. Already about 14,500 published genera 

 had been dealt with. As a sequel there will be a new addition 

 of Steudel's ' Nomenclator,' the funds for which have been supplied 

 by the munificence of the late Mr. Charles Darw^ui, Mr. B. D. 

 Jackson undertaking its superintendence. The obituary notices 

 of deceased Fellows were afterwards read by the Secretary, the 

 Society having to deplore, amongst others, the loss of Charles 

 Darwm, Professor Rolleston, Sir C. Wyville Thomson, and then* 

 late Treasurer, Mr. Frederick Currey, who had been in office above 

 twenty years, as also the Librarian, Mr. E. Kippist, who had been 

 in the Society's service over fifty years. The scrutineers having 

 examined the ballot, then reported that Mr. H. W. Bates, Professor 

 T. S. Cobbold, Professor P. M. Duncan, Mr.. E. M. Holmes, and 

 Sir J. D. Hooker, had been elected into the Council, in the place 

 of Professor Allmau, Rev. J. M. Crombie, W. S. Dallas, A. Grote, 

 and Professor Laukester, who retired ; and for officers Sir J. 

 Lubbock as President, Frank Crisp as Treasurer, and B. D. Jack- 

 son and G. J. Romanes as Secretaries. 



June 1. — Frank Crisp, LL.B., Treasurer, in the chair. — 

 Mr. H. C. Burdett was elected a Fellow of the Society.— Mr. H. N. 

 Ridley di-ew attention to a specimen of F.quisetuni maximum, Lam., 

 to which reference is made at p. 246. — The Rev. G. Henslow 

 exhibited a specimen of malformed Wallflower, in which the petals 

 were suppressed or represented by small green scales. It had no 

 stamens, but in then- place malformed carpels, either free or 

 coherent with the pistil, as in similar examples described by 

 Masters and others. Mr. Henslow also drew attention to a Rhodo- 

 dendron, in which every blossom had an open pistil with petals 

 and stamens growing within and at the base. A third specimen 

 shown and commented upon was a double garden Ranunculus with 

 a mass of foliaceous petals. — Dr. T. S. Ralph, A.L.S., exhibited 

 specimens of growing Vallisneria from Sydney, Australia, and 

 supposed to differ somewhat from the European species, V. 



