86 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 
fungi, and analogy would lead one to suppose they might possibly 
be met with in lichens. Mr. Archer considered the vessels in 
question as neither annular nor scalariform, but truly spiral, and 
where through the brown cellular mass he had been able to trace 
the ends of the fibres, he found that they gradually tapered, and in 
one instance one had been broken off by pressure and the fibre 
uncoiled. There was a peculiarity about these vascular bundles, 
vi. that certain of them, running up and down parallel with the 
other vessels of the bundle, upon meeting did not overlap, but 
suddenly diverged at right angles from the rest, and were prolonged 
a direction vertical to them, the whole bundle having a T-like 
orm. 
Botanical Science has sustained lately two great losses in the 
deaths of Sir W. J. Hooker and Dr. Lindley. The former, as 
Director of Kew Gardens, has long been known as a scientific 
botanist of eminence, and the father of a greater botanist, Dr. J. D. 
Hooker, who succeeds him. Dr. Lindley long filled the chair of 
Botany at University College, and but recently retired from that 
position, to be succeeded by Mr. Oliver. Dr. Lindley’s works upon 
his favourite science are justly celebrated—his ‘ Vegetable Kingdom’ 
being the most comprehensive condensed account of the subject in 
our language. Few English botanists equalled Dr. Lindley in 
the acuteness of his scientific views and the perspicuity of his 
writings. 
TV. CHEMISTRY. 
(Including the Proceedings of the Chemical Society.) 
TuerzE is but little of general and popular interest to chronicle this 
quarter in the progress of a science which nevertheless goes on 
developing itself at a rate unparalleled im the history of any other 
branch of knowledge. A Registrar-General of Chemistry might 
present us with a list of the new compounds born perhaps daily in 
the laboratories of the numerous chemists who are devoting them- 
selves to the science ; but our limits will not allow us to assume 
the functions of such an official, and we must content ourselves 
with presenting our readers with a short account of those dis- 
coveries which have a general and practical interest rather than 
those, however valuable, which have a purely scientific bearing. 
Following the usual order, and adopting the now almost dis- 
carded distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry, we may 
first refer to the discoveries in the latter branch. And first among 
these we must mention the announcement made by Dr. A. W. 
Hofmann, at the meeting of the British Association, of the dis- 
covery, by Lossen, of a series of bodies intermediate between nitric 
