8 NATURAL SCIENCE. j AN ., 



regards the first as the most important, since Linnaeus, meaning that 

 his species should be the one generally accepted, drew up his 

 diagnosis by directly copying from his predecessors, altering it just so 

 far as to make it include his authentic specimens. Where, as some- 

 times happened, the latter were wrong, these alterations introduced 

 difficulties which can only be dealt with in each individual case. 

 As regarded the pictures cited, the writer finds them to be of small 

 value, since in the first place the pictures of the time were poor and 

 it is frequently hard to decide which of half a dozen or more allied 

 species is represented, and secondly, " even when the figures were 

 good, Linnaeus seems to have allowed for a good deal of variability in 

 the plant and imagination in the artist." 



From the above data we have to decide in each case to what 

 plant we will apply each Linnaean specific name, and how the name 

 is to be quoted. For instance, by Cyperus Haspan Linnaeus meant the 

 plant now generally known under that name, including, however, several 

 which are now regarded as distinct species, but the sheet marked haspan 

 in Linnaeus' hand is C. Ina. Again, Scirpus supinus, Linn., is a wide- 

 spread species, the naming of which has never been questioned, but 

 the plant in the herbarium so named has nothing whatever to denote 

 it, belonging, in fact, to a different family. As, however, from the 

 citations of his predecessors and his diagnosis, it is clear that 

 Linnaeus meant our S. supinus, the name must be retained for the 

 plant to which it has always been applied. In spite of all these 

 difficulties, Mr. Clarke is still able to mark a large majority of the 

 species as good. 



Casuarina. 



Anatomical characters would not seem to furnish a very sure guide 

 to the systematic affinity of a plant, unless notions of systematic 

 botany are first to be completely revolutionised. It will be 

 remembered that Treub, after working at the mode of pollination and 

 embryology of that strange-looking Australian plant genus Casuavina, 

 decided that it must have a subdivision all to itself, which he styled 

 Chalazogams, comparable with one to be known as Porogams, in 

 which the rest of the Angiosperms were contained. The point of 

 distinction, among others noted, on which the name Chalazogams 

 was based was the path taken by the pollen tube along the 

 chalaza and up through the base of the embryo-sac, and not as in the 

 Porogams a direct one through the micropyle. Some recent investi- 

 gations into the anatomy of Casuarina, carried out by Messrs. Boodle 

 and Worsdell, and published in the " Annals of Botany " (viii., 

 pp. 231-264), do not afford much matter for argument either for or 

 against the position assigned to the plant by Treub. In the structure 

 of the bast or phloem, " it shows no important departure from the 

 dicotyledonous type," while in the wood portion of the vascular tissue 



