BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 71 



residence at Tunbridge Wells, where he died on December 17. 

 Here he took a warm interest in the Natural History Society, of 

 which he was successively secretary and vice-president, and devoted 

 himself to the careful study of Eubi, especially of the Suberecti 

 section ; on these he published papers in this Journal for 1907 and 

 1912. His views as to their hybridity were somewhat severely 

 criticised, but he maintained that his observations confirmed his 

 conclusions, which he thought found further support in his large 

 series of specimens. Ho had previously raised the question of 

 hybridity in a paper, also criticised, on "The Oxlip, Cowslip, and 

 Primrose," in this Journal for 1903, based on observations made 

 at Montreux in that year. 



Alfred Stanley Marsh was killed in France on January 

 5th, 1916. He was but twenty-four years of age at his death. 

 Going up to Cambridge as an Exhibitioner of Trinity in 1909, he 

 became a Senior Scholar in 1911. His university career was very 

 successful; he obtained a double first, and was awarded the Potts 

 Exhibition at Trinity and the Frank Smart Studentship. He 

 was acting as temporary demonstrator at the Botany School, 

 Cambridge, when war broke out. After some training he was 

 gazetted to the 8th Somerset Light Infantry, and at the time of 

 his death had reached the rank of captain. Marsh had published 

 a couple of papers on plant anatomy in 1914, and last year an 

 account of the maritime ecology of Holme, Norfolk. Eeaders of 

 this Journal will recollect his valuable account of Azolla which 

 was reprinted in 1914 (pp. 209-213) from the Proceedings of the 

 Camhridge PJiilosajjliical Society. Marsh was a very good field 

 botanist both from tlie old and from the new standpoint, and a 

 splendid companion in the field. By his death British Botany 

 suffers a great loss, as there can be no doubt that a career begun 

 with such promise would have been highly successful. J. R. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on December 16th, 

 1915, Mr. T. A. Dymes read a paper " On the Seed-mass and Dis- 

 persal of Hellehorus foBtidus, Linn.," summarised as follows: The 

 seeds of H. fmtidus, L., are remarkable in being shed from the 

 follicle in a single mass, bound more or less tightly together by a 

 thick, white ventral strip of oleaginous tissue. This is the elaio- 

 some of Sernander, and it is of raphal origin. Owing to the con- 

 trast of the shining elaiosome with the almost black seeds, the 

 mass as a whole bears, at a short distance, a deceptive resemblance 

 to the larva of a beetle. Observations were made, over two con- 

 secutive nights, on the work of the snails, which disintegrate the 

 mass by devouring the elaiosome, thus reducing it eventually to 

 single seeds. Experiments were also made with a view to estab- 

 lishing the possibilty of molluscan dispersal of single seeds over a 

 short distance. Observations in nature, and on captive Helix 

 aspersa, point to the conclusion that the elaiosome offers an 

 attraction as a molluscan dainty in the way of food. Experiments 

 in the open do not support the idea of the larval resemblance being 

 an adaptation to ornithochory, or that there is any regular dispersal 



