128 BOTANICAL NEWS. 



Islands, of which the vegetation was nearly unknown ; but his 

 visit, from severe illness, lasted but three months. With charac- 

 teristic promptitude, a report on the results of the expedition was 

 printed early in 1870. M. Kurz has been a frequent contributor 

 to this Journal, his most important communications being a 

 valuable monograph of the Indiaii PandanacecB in the volume for 

 1867, and an account of the Flora of the Nicobar Islands in 1875. 

 The death, on January 6th, is recorded of Joachim J. Monteiro, 

 who, during his residence of eighteen years in Angola as a mining 

 geologist, contributed considerably to the knowledge of its flora by 

 collecting and sending home specimens both livmg and dried ; 

 amongst others, some of the first specimens of WeJwitschia received 

 in England. He returned home a few years since, and in 1875 

 published a volume on ' Angola and the Eiver Congo.' The following 

 year he went out to tlie eastern side of the African continent, Delagoa 

 Bay, and it was here, at Lourenzo Marques, that he died. 



Michel Charles Durieu de Maisonneuve, died at Bordeaux, 

 on February 20, aged 82. His work in the floras of Algeria and of 

 Western France was very accurate and valuable. 



The Botanic Gardens at Kew have hitherto been closed to the 

 pubhc till 1 p.m. This is found so troublesome by those chiefly 

 interested that an effort is now being made by horticulturists and 

 other semi- scientific people with little leisure to obtain an earlier 

 hour of admittance. Up to the present, however, this has been 

 refused, the chief reason given being that it would seriously 

 interfere with the strictly scientific work of the garden, which is 

 carried on durmg the morning. Such is, at all events, the ground 

 taken in a memorial sent round for the signature of botanists, 

 emanating from two well-known lecturers, and advocating the 

 continuance of the existing regulation. If such a result were likely 

 to follow the jDublic opening of the gardens in the morning, it 

 would be in our opinion a sufficient reason for refusing to make 

 the change ; but we are convinced that the danger is wholly in 

 ai)prehension. Besides the oflicials themselves, we believe we are 

 not wrong in saying that the number of x)ersons engaged in any 

 definite scientific work in the gardens at Kew (we do not speak, of 

 course, of the herbarium) is exceedingly small. Into the causes 

 of this it is not necessary to enter, but it is obviously undesirable 

 that everybody else should suffer in order that half-a-dozen artists 

 and experimenters in fertilization may be undisturbed. What 

 more easy than to rail off any spot (it is not asked to have the 

 houses open) where special work is going on ? Besides, there is 

 the new Jodrell Laboratory in the gardens, built expressly for the 

 use of the very persons in whose interests it is sought to conthiue 

 to keep the whole of the gardens closed till the afternoon. Wishing, 

 as every botanist must do, to see the utility of the magnificent gardens 

 at Kew increased, we cannot but think that their early opening is 

 much to be desired on behalf of a large class of deserving persons not 

 likely to abuse the privilege ; we also hope to hear of scientific work 

 of an experimental kind done in the new Laboratory. 



