58 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



phrase " La pr^floraison spiralo est aussi nommi' imhriquee " ; antl in 

 noting that when the number stops at five, the pieces fall into two 

 exterior, two interior, and one (the third in the spiral) intcrmodiate, 

 this making what is called astivatio quincuncialis* This is clear and 

 to the point. lint other authors have had a fancy for distinguishing 

 hctween (juincuncial and imbricate (as if the former were not the 

 typical case of the latter when the parts are five), and so have had to 

 devise something else to answer to imbricate. Alphonse l)e Candolle 

 (in his Introd. Bot., i, 154, written before phyllotavy was well under- 

 stood), after relegating imhricative to the category of a crowd of 

 verticils, and remarking that the quincuncial is sometimes confounded 

 with the imbricate, adds : some confound also under this latter name 

 the case in which there is one exterior piece, one interior, and thn^e 

 covered at one margin but free at the other. I know not where this 

 began ; but its latest reproduction is in Le Maout and Decaisne's 

 Traitc General, and in the English translation of it. In the diagram 

 the pieces are numbered directly round the circle from 1 to 5, the tifth 

 coming next the first : '* so they thus com])lete one turn of a spiral " — 

 which shows that Le Maout had vague ideas of phyllotaxy, of which 

 he seems to have invented a new {\) order. Moreover this is essentially 

 identical with the cochlear a)stivation of the same work (not of 

 Ijindley) ; and Eichler, in his " lUUthendiagramme," adopts this name 

 (unsuitable though it be) for this particular arrangement, whatever 

 be the position of the enclosed or enclosing petal. A glance shows 

 that this supposed " true imbricate aestivation " is a slight and not 

 very uncommon deviation (by the displacement of what should be the 

 interior margin of one of the petals during growth) of the mode II., 

 variously termed obvolute, convolute, or contorted {estivation. Jiut 

 it is 80 intermediate between this and the quiucuncially imbricate as 

 perhaps to justify Brown in applying the name imbricate generically 

 to all the overlapping modes. I see, since the above was written, that 

 Eichler, in his " Bliithendiagramme," in ettect does this. I find also 

 that Eichler uniformly employs the term convolute, or convolittive, as I 

 liave done, instead of contorted. I should hope, rather than imme- 

 diately expect, that this use would become general. — [From the 

 ** American Journal of Science and Arts," vol. x., Nov., 1875.] 



^15oticc^ of 23oohj3f. 



FlantcB AbyssiniciC collectionin nnpcrrimoi (a. 1803-8) schimpename 

 enumcrnUc [Compositaj], auctorc \V. Vatke. [Linmoa xxxix., 

 pp. 475-518 (1875).] 



The distribution of the sets of this collection of Schimper's Abyssi- 

 nian plants was made by Mr. J. J. Iicnnett in the year 1809 from the 

 British Museum, where he deposited a very rich set, accompanied by 



* The name quincuncial answers the purpose after definition, and has long 

 been in use ; but this arrangement in diagram is wholly unlike tho qnincuHx, with 

 its four pieces or btiirs in the periphery, or at the angles of a square, and one in 

 the centre. 



