LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. lxxi 
stecher’s Contributions to the Anatomy of the Acari or Mites. In 
the lower subkingdoms Professor Milne-Edwards’s Natural History of 
Corals and Polypes has been completed by the publication of the third 
volume, whilst the works of Claparéde and Lachmann and of Stein 
on the classification and organization of the Infusoria, and especially 
of M. Balbiani on the reproduction of those animals, cannot but be 
regarded as of the greatest interest and value. Nor can the im- 
portant and curious observations of Dr. George Wallich and of 
M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards on the existence of even highly 
organized animal life at enormous depths in the sea be passed over 
without especial notice, subversive as they are of many of the 
hitherto prevalent notions on the subject, and of the highest interest 
in several points of view. 
In Cryptogamic Botany I need not mention the numerous illus- 
trated fern-works which the present fashion has called forth; for 
the majority of them are hardly scientific; but I cannot pass over 
the elaborate and careful Species Filicum of Sir William Hooker, of 
which the 13th Part, comprising the first portion of the most difficult 
Aspidiez, has been lately issued, without expressing my most anxious 
hope that its distinguished author may long enjoy his present health 
and vigour, so as to bring that valuable work to a conclusion. I must 
also refer to Tulasne’s beautifully illustrated Selecta Fungorum 
Carpologia as the most important work on fungi which has appeared 
for a long time. 
In Phenogamic Botany we have not within the last year or two 
witnessed the publication of any of those model monographs of 
Orders of which we owed so many to the late Adrien de Jussieu and 
others of the French school; Weddell’s Urticez being one of the last 
that has appeared. But several monographic papers have been 
inserted in Journals or Transactions of Societies which may illustrate 
the principles I have above alluded to. Of those orders which, having 
been treated only in the early volumes of DeCandolle’s Prodromus, 
have now required a thorough revision, a considerable number have 
been the subject of more or less complete monographs, amongst which 
I would particularly mention Planchon and Triana’s Guttifere in the 
Annales des Sciences Naturelles, and Prof. Oliver’s Aurantiace in 
our own Journal,—both of them valuable contributions to science as 
examples of thorough investigation, careful observation, and sound 
criticism ; whilst M. Jacob Miller, who in a three days’ excursion 
in the Vosges finds 31 new Brambles, and devotes 40 pages of the 
Bonplandia to their description, and 225 pages of the Pollichia to 
239 Rubi from a very limited Gallo-Germanic region, may be said 
