February 2^t/i, /po2.] PROCEEDINGS. xxxiii 



Mr. R. L. Taylor read a paper " On a Modification 

 of Rose's Method of separating Cobalt and Nickel." 



Mr. D. L. Chapman described some experiments which have 

 been carried out, in conjunction with Mr. F. A. Lidbury, 

 principally for the purpose of discovering whether Faraday's law 

 may be considered as applying to gases. The electric discharge 

 was passed through water vapour, and the separation of oxygen 

 and hydrogen which took place was found to be from two to 

 three times as great as that which occurred in a voltameter 

 placed in the same circuit. The results are, therefore, incon- 

 sistent with the view that the phenomenon is essentially 

 electrolytic. 



\AIicroscopical and Natural History Seciw?t.'\ 



Ordinary Meeting, February 24th, 1902. 



Charles Bailey, F.L.S., President of the Section, in the Chair. 



Mr. T- C. Melvill exhibited specimens of the brake fern 

 {Pteris aquilitia L.), from all parts of the world, showing 



{a) typical var. glabra ; 



{b) downy-leaved var. lanuginosa ; 



(c) Australian and New Zealand forms of var. esculenta ; 



{d) South American and Florida forms of var. caudata. 

 Likewise a curious sport, of which the President also supplied 

 examples from his herbarium, of a beautiful form with thin 

 fronds from the debris of an excavation made for a plunge bath 

 at Coventry, Warwickshire, in 1853, by the late Mr. Thomas 

 Kirk, F.L-S. In Vol. I. of the New Series of the Phytologist, 

 pp. 3QO and 463, are letters concerning this discovery, one by 

 Mr. Thomas Moore, pronouncing it definitely to be the common 

 Bracken, although some doubt had been cast upon this, owing 

 to the very different appearance it assumed. 



