142 CORRESPONDENCE REPORTS. 



the capture of one either in 1875 or 1876. It was, as near as I can 

 remember, about 50 miles heloiv Dresden ; certainly between Dresden 

 and Mai^deburg, and I am nearhj certain above Wittenberg. I think 

 I saw it in the " Illustrierte Zeitung," but am sorry to say I made no 

 note of the occurrence at the time. — J. E. Clark, Bootham, York. 



Minerals of the Midlands. — I do iKjt think Mr. Woodward has a 

 record of Galena, from tlie Silurians of South Staffordshire. Mr. C. 

 Cochrane, of Stourbridge (to whom I am indebted for much 

 information respecting the geologj' of South Staffordshire), has in his 

 collection a fine specimen of this mineral in a block of Silurian 

 Limestone from near Dudley. — W. J. H. 



Cambrian Rocks in Warwickshire. — A very interesting and remark- 

 able discovery has lately been made by Professor C. Lapworth and Mr. 

 VV. J. Harrison, of Birmingham. All the quartzite rocks which lie 

 between Nuneaton and Hartshill, in Warwickshire, together with a 

 considerable thickness of overlying shaly beds, belong to the Cambrian 

 formation, instead of being millstone grit and coal-measures, as 

 they were mapped by the Government Geological Survey. 

 Midland workers in geology will no longer have to go so far as Wales 

 to examine Cambrian rocks, or to seek for Cambrian fossils, for here, 

 at their very doors, are the oldest positively fossiliferous strata in the 

 world. The beds are being diligently worked, and details of this 

 important discovery will shortly be made public. 



^ciDiuM OR fficiDiDM? — Almost all English botanists write the 

 name of this genus of leaf -fungi with the Ai, while the best French 

 botanists have for several years adopted the correct spelling, (E. 

 Those who adopt the former spelling give its derivation from aiKL^eiv, 

 " to affect injuriously ; " but it requires very little knowledge of Greek 

 to see that this etymology is impossible. As a matter of fact, the 

 question is not one which admits of dispute. The original creator of 

 the genus, John Hill, in his " History of Plants," published at London 

 in 1778 (p. ()4), indicates the derivation in the following terms: — 

 " ^cidium .... we have called this genus, distinguished by its 

 peculiar cells, ^cidium, from the Greek olKidiov, ccllulu," i.e., a little 

 room or apartment. Here, it is true, the author or the printer (most 

 probably the latter) has put ^E instead of (E ; I say the printer, 

 because in the index at the end we find fficidium, and, as every one 

 knows, the index, being printed last, affords the author an opportunity 

 of correcting the typographical errors of the text. The interchange 

 of these digraphs is one of the commonest of printer's errors. Some 

 compiler-botanists would, indeed, regard a typographical mistake of 

 this sort as sacred; but jEcidium cannot come from otV/Sioi', as John 

 Hill says /(/sword does; therefore his word was not ^cidium, but 

 (Ecidium, a title very applicable to the pustules of these Uredinese. 

 —See Bull. Soc. Bot. France, 1880, pp. 288-9.— W. B. Grove, B.A . 



Itprts of ^atittics. 



BIRMINGHAM NATURAL HISTORY AND MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY.— 

 General Meeting, May 2nd. Mr. W. B. Grove presented to the Society, on 

 behalf of Mr. C. B. Plowright, the eminent fungologist of King's Lynn, a collec- 

 tion of ninety Fungi, many of which have been discovered by Mr. Plowright 

 himself since the publication of Cooke's Handbook. The President described 

 his visit to the meeting of the Royal Microscopical Society during the previous 



