114 TRANSACTIONS, NATXTRAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW, 



sustained through the death of its Corresponding Member, Rev. 

 Hugh Macinillan, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., (fee, of Greenock, speak- 

 ing of his high attainments in natural history, and of the 

 many and varied works which had been the product of his 

 versatile pen. He proposed that the Society should send a 

 letter to his widow expressing the universal sorrow with which 

 the members regarded the removal by death of one of their 

 most distinguished members. The vote of sympathy was 

 unanimously passed. Mr. Alex. Somerville, B.Sc, F.L.S., also 

 testified to the great literary distinction and high character of 

 the deceased. 



Mr. Somerville then addressed the meeting briefly on the 

 subject of the proposed memorial to the late George Don, the 

 celebrated botanist, whose remarkable discoveries of rare plants 

 (in Forfarshire in particular) had been for many years ridiculed 

 as being untrue, but whose veracity and forwardness in botanical 

 research had now been thoroughly established. He explained 

 how there had been a movement to erect a memorial to this 

 pioneer in his native town of Montrose as a kind of tardy 

 repentance and reparation for the slight which had been so long 

 resting on his name. He urged that the proposal should be 

 liberally supported by the members. 



Mrs. Ewing exhibited a Gall pioduced on the root of the 

 Alder by Frankia alni (Wor.). It is known as the Mycodom<jfia 

 or " fungus chambers " of the Alder. FranTcia alni affects such 

 plants as possess a well-developed and normal root-system, and 

 also characteristic outgrowths, which may increase to very large 

 tubers, with surfaces resembling a bunch of grapes. In the cells 

 of the middle layers of the primary root cortex of these growths, 

 coils of very fine fungus threads are sheltered; these extend 

 year after year into the younger parts of the enlarging tubercles, 

 and gradually disappear in the older parts. The species of 

 fungi which produces these tubercles has been provisionally 

 distinguished as Frankia alni (Wor.)". Woronin described them 

 first on the Alder, Warming on the Eleagnacea;, and MoUer 

 proved their fungal origin. Their relations with the host plants 

 are supposed to be symbiotic, but what the significance of 

 these structures may be for plants possessing chlorophyll, and 

 furnished with normal roots is as yet unknown. It is said that 

 plants which have grown well for years in water cultures do not 



