NRTICES 01'^ BOOKS AND MEMOIRS. 27 



only method of rencleriug such study " agreeable and lastingly 

 fruitful" consists in arousing the pupils' interest in the discrimi- 

 nation of the native plants of their locality. A ' Victorian School- 

 Flora,' commenced by the author with this object, is postponed 

 for the publication of this more elementary treatise. In this each 

 large Order of the flora of Victoria is taken up and described in a 

 plain but attractive manner. The Gum-trees [Eucah/2)tm), as 

 forming the chief timber-trees of the Australian Continent, are 

 taken first, and other Victorian genera of Myrtacea follow. The 

 second chapter is devoted to the Wattles [Acacia) and other Legu- 

 mmos(B ; the third to the She-oaks [Casicarina), and so on through 

 twenty-two chapters. The subjects are well illustrated by clear 

 large woodcuts, mostly copied from the plates of the author's 

 ' Plants of Victoria ' : most of these are of course quite unfamiliar, 

 even by name, to the majority of English botanists ; and indeed it 

 cannot fail to strike all as remarkable to see species unknown to 

 Science withm the lifetime of the present generation now used as 

 illustrations of elementary facts in a book for school-children. In 

 Europe we have become accustomed to the well-known stock 

 illustrations ; but it is natural and right that our colonies should 

 make their own text-books, and use the plants which grow on 

 their own soil. As one of the first productions of its class in a 

 British colony, therefore, the present treatise has a particular 

 interest. ^ H. T. 



Bdtrdge zur Entwickelunqsqescliichte der Flechten, von E. Stahl, 

 Heft n. (A. Felix, Leipzig, 1877). 



The first part of this work, which dealt with the CollemacecB, and 

 more especially with the question of then- reproduction, was noticed 

 in the Journal for 1877, p. 284. It will be remembered that the 

 results obtamed were clearly in favour of the sexuality of their 

 reproduction, and as clearly confirmative of Schwendener's discovery 

 as they could well be. In this second part the nature of the 

 Hymenial-gonidia is the subject, and in his cultivation "from spore 

 to spore" of the plants treated of. Dr. Stahl has succeeded in 

 gaining for us a very complete knowledge of these until now little 

 known organisms. That it was Nylander who first called attention 

 to the constant occmTence of these Hymenial-gonidia in the 

 empty spaces of the perithecia of many pyrenocarpous lichens, 

 appears strange when it is made known how ill their life-history 

 agrees with his " anti-Schwendeneristic" views. However, he did 

 little beyond proclaiming their existence ; and Fuisting and Winter 

 were the first to show that the Hymenial-gonidia were the off- 

 spring of the Thallus-gonidia. The part played by them in the 

 vital economy of the lichen still remained unknown, and afforded 

 to one party a subject for speculation and to the other a matter to 

 be rather avoided than otherwise. Dr. Stahl, not contented with 

 speculation, has now investigated them with the following results. 



In the hymenium of Derinatocarpon SchcBreri, and growing 

 free betAveen the asci, are to be found globular Hymenial- 



