1893. NOTES AND COMMENTS. gi 
Tue illustration of scientific lectures or papers by means of 
lantern-slides is becoming fairly general; and it certainly tends to 
render the meetings of learned societies more instructive as well as 
more interesting. In this way the physical features of a country or 
the microscopic structure of a rock, the organisms of sewage or the 
‘extinct monsters” of many geological periods, may be faithfully 
reproduced on the screen from photographs or original drawings. 
The Royal Society, the Linnean Society, the Royal and London 
Institutions, the Geologists’ Association, and other bodies in London, 
have introduced the lantern into their meeting-rooms with marked 
success ; the Geological Society, however, has hitherto held aloof. 
THERE must be a sad lack of originality, combined with a confused 
sense of the rights of literary property, at the Royal Gardens, Kew. 
Not very long ago, the Assistant Director was in trouble about the 
originality of some observations about sugar canes, and now the 
Director himself has to answer for a remarkable feat in the way of 
piracy. At least, this is the case according to a letter we have 
received from Mr. James Britten, Editor of the Fournal of Botany. It 
appears that when Miss North died, Mr. Hemsley wrote for the 
Fournal of Botany an obituary notice which was published in that 
Fournal for 1890 (p. 329). Last year, Miss North’s Recollections of a 
Happy Life was published, and the Fifth Edition of the Guide to the 
North Gallery has recently appeared, with a short biographical 
account of Miss North, which is officially stated to be compiled from the 
Recollections, and other sources. Mr. Britten writes that, on the 
contrary, this biography “is taken bodily, and without a word of 
acknowledgment, from the Yournal of Botany. . . . The Recollections 
have yielded twelve lines out of five pages; from the ‘ other sources,’ 
apart from the .fournal of Botany, not a sentence has been cited.” 
Two new botanical journals appeared last month. The one is 
under the direction of the Department of Botany in the University 
of California, and named Evythea: a Fournal of Botany, West American 
and Geneval. The other is a monthly, entitled The Orchid Review, 
published by Messrs. West, Newman & Co., London. The Germans 
have also issued a new geological monthly, entitled Zeitschrift fiir 
praktische Geologie. 
