488 lAnruean Society. 



Drops of Water — their marvellous and beautiful Inhabitants dis' 

 played by the Microscope. By Agnes Catlow. London: Reeve 

 and Benham. 



The illustrious Nieolaus Klim, in his wonderful ' Unterirdische 

 Rcise,' tells us that by tumbling down a great chasm in the " Moun- 

 tain Flojen," near " Bergen in Norway," he became acquainted with 

 an altogether new world, peopled with plant-men, animated fiddles, 

 and such like eccentricities of nature. But that was in the 17th cen- 

 tury. In the 19th, thanks to the progress of the sciences, we have 

 not to go so far as Bergen in Norway to find wonders quite as great. 



For a consideration far more trifling than the many years' absence — 

 the shipwrecks — the break-neck falls — the humiliation endured by 

 the great Klim — we may each and all of us become possessed (by 

 favoiir of Messrs. Ross or Smith) of a ' Mountain Flojen' of our own, 

 by the mere looking through which — without tumbling — we may 

 find every drop of stagnant water to be a world peopled with inha- 

 bitants stranger than those of the planet Nazar, or even than those 

 of the "Musicanten-laud." 



To those who have not yet paid a visit to these mysterious regions — 

 who stand yet hesitating and seeking for a guide, before they venture 

 among living and revolving " globes, tops, trumpets, pincushions with 

 pins in ready for use, telescopes, balls, leaves, sticks, threads, bells, 

 hollow spheres" (p. 24), we may very properly recommend the 

 pleasing little work of Miss Catlow. 



We cannot wish the authoress better than that her work may be 

 the means of inducing many to seek for other and higher sources of 

 information — perhaps even to become themselves investigators — and 

 rescue here and there a fragment from the domain of ignorance. 



Works in the Press. 

 We have much pleasure in announcing that a Third Edition of 

 Babington's " Manual of British Botany" will be published in a few 

 davs. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



LINN^AN SOCIETY. 



June 18, 1850. — Robert Brown, Esq., President, in the Chair. 



Read a paper " On the Structure of the Fruit in Punica." Bv 

 H. F. Hance, Esq , Ph.D. 



Mr. Hance's observations were made chiefly on double flowers, 

 exhibiting several varieties of monstiosity, obtained from a plant 

 growing in his garden at Hong Kong, and compared with the normal 

 state. He refers to the opinions of Mr. Griffith and Dr. Wight, and 

 agrees with the latter in considering the pistillum as compound, 

 many of the double flowers distinctly exhibiting the imperfect cohe- 

 sion of the carpidia, and the stylar laminae being even in some in- 

 stances quite separate to the very summit. His own explanation of 

 the remarkable disposition of the cells of the fruit of the Pomegranate 



