278 NOTICES OF BOOKS AND MEMOIRS. 



although I have frequently met with it on the Continent, I have 

 never seen it grow there to such perfection as it does in the locality 

 I refer to. I have had the pleasure of pointing it out to two 

 or three botanists upon whose trustworthiness 1 believe I can rely, 

 otherwise I am rather jealous of divulging its habitat. Many of 

 the beech woods about here have been cut down of late years, and 

 this has had the effect of destroying many orchids. I have good 

 reason to believe that a former habitat of C. rubra has been 

 destroyed in this way. — H. C. Eeader. 



Festuca ambigua at Thetford. — I w^as down in Suffolk on 

 July 19th, and in the neighbourhood of Thetford found Festuca 

 ambigua in abundance ; it was growing on sandy banks on Thetford 

 Heath with Agrostis (Apera) interrupta, Medicago minima, and 

 Veronica verna, the last four inches or several five inches high. I 

 have never seen it before more than three inches and a half high 

 on Ickligham Heath ; doubtless the excessively wet spring and 

 summer have been the cause. Near it (showing the curious season) 

 was Draba verna in flower and fruit. I will later on send j^ou 

 a series of the Festuca, but I was at least a fortnight too late 

 to gather it in good condition. — A. Bennett. 



JuNcus DiFFusus IN WORCESTERSHIRE. — I have met witli Juncus 

 diffusus growing in considerable quantity upon Newland Common, 

 near Malvern. Its existence there may be of interest, as it 

 has not hitherto been recorded as a Worcestershire plant. — E. F. 



ToWNDROW. 



Nottces of 33ooR^ anir iWrmotrs* 



Ueber Befruchtung und Zelltheilung. Von Dr. Edouard Stras- 



BURGER. Jena, 1877. 

 Although more than a quarter of a century ago Reichenbach 

 studied the division of the pollen-cell in Orchids and compared this 

 process with that exhibited by Coniferte, and although Hartig saw 

 division of the nuclei in Tradescantia, Campanula, and a few other 

 cases, their observations axDpearto have passed out of view, and it was 

 entirely as a new subject that the author took up the systematic 

 study of this phenomenon. His method consists in cultivating 

 the pollen in 3 per cent, or 5 per cent, solution of sugar, then 

 treating with 1 per cent, osmic acid, and staining with carmine. 

 The pollen-cell of Narcissus pueticus thus prepared is seen to have 

 a spherical nucleus provided with a nucleolus aiid a spindle-shaped 

 enucleolate one with granular plasma collected at the two poles. In 

 a bud of Allium Jistuiusum, 4-5 mm. long, some of the grains have 

 two nuclei near their flat side separated by a wall shaped like a 



