338 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION D. 



8.— ON THE PROTECTION OF NATIVE BIRDS. 

 By A. J. Campbell, H. M. Customs, Melbourne. 



9.— NOTE ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE SEXUAL 

 ORGANS IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 



By F. Jefpery Parker, B.Sc, F.R.S,, Professor of Biology in the 

 University of Otago, New Zealand. 



In a recent paper* Mr. R. J. Harvey Gibson makes some very 

 useful suggestions as to the nomenclature of the reproductive 

 organs and their products in plants. The leading idea of this 

 paper is, that the time is now ripe for abolishing the existing 

 multitudinous and confusing terminology of the sexual organs of 

 plants, and for adopting names which shall be applicable to the 

 whole of living things, whether plants or animals, in which such 

 organs occur. The author would get rid of all such terms as 

 oogonium, archegonium, archicarp, procarp, carpogone, and 

 ascogone, and call the female sexual oi'gan an ovarium whatever 

 the details of its structure : in the same way he would drop the 

 names antheridium, spermogonium, pollinodium, and antheridial 

 branch, for the male organ, and call it uniformly a sj^ermarium. 

 In correspondence with this he suggests the universal application 

 of the name ovuTn to the essential female element, the egg-.5ell, 

 oosphere, or female gamete ; and of the name sperm to the essential 

 male element, the spermatozoid, antherozoid, spermatium, or male 

 gamete. 



The advantage both to the teacher and to the student of Biology 

 of some such unif<)rm nomenclature would be immense. As Mr. 

 Gibson remarks, the union of the sub-sciences of Botany and 

 Zoology under the one heading of Biology, is the outward and 

 visible sign of a unity of ti'eatment : he instances the adoption 

 of the word protoplasm, by both geologists and botanists as a 

 notable case in which the " biological " treatment of the two 

 sister sciences has resulted in a simplication of nomenclature of 

 equal advantage to each. I may also adduce the adoption of the 

 word metabolism, by both vegetable and animal physiologists as 

 another striking example of the same tendency, a tendency which 

 none but a " scarabeeist " of the first magnitude will regret. 

 When once the homology of two structures, hitherto known by 

 different names, whether in plants and animals, or in different 



* " On the Terminology of the Reproductive Organs of Plants." Read before the Liver- 

 pool Biological Society, 10th December, 1887. 



