.128 BOTANICAL NEWS. 



Geneva, however, fruiting is of rarer occurrence, but more 

 frequent at Lyons and the Rhone Valley. Fruiting he suggests 

 may be a question of temperature, and not of nutrition dependant on 

 presence or absence of sux)port. From these instances and other 

 data, Mr. Dyer fails to see evidence of the antagonism of the 

 vegetative and reproductive forces as implied and asserted m Mr. 

 Meehan's observations. If such barrenness were the case, W, 

 sinensis, with its scandent habit, would probably already be extinct. 



March 20, 1879.— William Carruthers, F.R.S., Vice-President, 

 in the chair. — The Rev. G. E. Commerford Casey, of Nottingham, 

 was elected a Fellow of the Society. — Mr. W. T. Thiselton Dyer 

 exhibited a very large and comj)lete museum specimen of Helichry- 

 suin vestituni, from the Cai)e of Good Hope. The folio whig botanical 

 paper was read: — * Some observations on the reproduction of Ferns 

 by budding,' by Mr. T. R. Sim. Among the great collection of 

 living Ferns at Kew a marked feature is the large number of sj)ecies 

 that regularly bear adventitious buds. Of a thousand species there 

 grown, about fifty are never found without buds, and some varieties 

 produce them regularly, though the normal forms of the species do 

 not. This number seems very high when compared with Phaner- 

 ogams. Among viviparous Ferns, the buds are always on the same 

 part of the plant in all the individuals of a sj)ecies. Polystichum 

 angidare bears a bud on the racliis in the axil of almost every pinna, 

 generally on the lower imrt of the frond, but in some cases all up 

 the rachis. Some Aspleniums produce them on the veins of the 

 upper surface of the frond, and these, though often directly opposite 

 to a sorus, are not connected with it. The Hymenophyllea rarely 

 produce buds, but the author believes that the minute cellular 

 bodies developed at the extremity of the divisions of the frond in 

 Trichonianes Kaulfussi are organs of propagation, and describes 

 their development. 



Botanical Nttos. 



The Botanical Department of the Imperial Museum of Vienna 

 has been i^laced under the keepership of Prof. H. W. Reichakdt, 

 with Dr. Gunther Beck as assistant. 



The death of Johan Angstrom occurred on Jan. 19th, at 

 Omskiulsvik, Sweden, at the age of 65. He was a well-known 

 bryologist, and had paid especial attention to the genus Sphaf/mim 

 and the mosses of Finland and Lapmark. The moss-genus 

 Angstromia, Bruch. & Schimp., was dedicated to him in 1846. 



Mr. Charles Larbalestier, B.A., announces his intention 

 of issuing, in the course of the summer and aiitumn of the present 

 year, a series of Fasciculi of the Lichens of West Ireland, 

 England, and the Channel Islands. Intending subscribers should 

 communicate at once with the author, Roche Vue, St. Aubin's, 

 Jersey. 



