118 



KOTES ON NEW GENERA. 

 By. C. E. BROOME, ESQ., F.L.S. 



In his admirable address to the Linnsean Society, in May, 1873, Mr. 

 Bentham alludes to the shortcomings of our countrymen in physiological 

 botany. He says : " While preparing a few notes on the recent progress of 

 the study of vegetable anatomy and physiology, I have been struck by the 

 observation made by more than one critic in this country, and commented 

 upon in some foreign journals, that we in England are in this respect some 

 way behind our continental neighbours— that for instance the most important 

 investigations and consequent discoveries relating to the incipient history of 

 cryptogamic plants have been made in France and Germany— and that we 

 are, in short, comparatively deficient in what the Germans are pleased specially 

 to distinguish by the names of Scientific Botany and Zoology. Without ad- 

 mitting for a moment that there is less of science in the study of compara- 

 tive anatomy, the mutual relations and consequent natural arrangement, 

 and the geographical distribution of the higher animals and plants than in 

 that of microscopic structure, we may acknowledge that there may be some 

 truth in the remark that, vdth few exceptions, we have not excelled in 

 that long, patient, and tedious devotion to one subject of limited extent 

 from which such discoveries have usually resulted ; and the fact may be, 

 in some measure, the result of our social habits and ideas." He asserts 

 fm-ther on ' " that with all our social drawbacks we have contributed our 

 fair share to the progress of natural, as well as of physical, mathematical, 

 and other sciences. We have had our Robert Brown, our John Ray, and 

 lastly, with such names as Linnseus and Darwin, the northern nations can 

 well hold their own in the presence of any scientific celebrities of Central 

 Europe." 



" One instance of the backwardness on our part to which I have alluded 

 is afforded in the investigation of the progress of growth, and especially 

 of the first formation an<l early development of the organised individual, 

 which, under the new lights thrown upon the subject by the Darwinian 

 theories, have been shown to have so important a bearing on difiicult 

 questions Ln animal and vegetable physiology and affinities." "We should 

 keep in mind a perceptible difference between our two great scientific 

 neighbours, the French and Germans. Excelling in method, the French 

 are unrivalled in clearness of exposition in Natural Histroy as in other sub- 

 jects. On the other hand, method and exposition are not among the distin- 

 guishing characteristics of German naturalists ; but they are beyond all compe- 



