589 BOTANICAL ‘NEWS. 
‘ledons in a highly specialized condition. The venation of the leaf: ds. 
parallel, as in Monocotyledons, yet like many Cycadee and some Coni- 
Jere, there are no lateral vascular communications between the veins. 
The general plan of the plant, however, is that of a Dicotyledon, as the 
structure of its embryo indicates.» The male flowers: are structurally 
hermaphrodite, and contain a naked ovule in the axis of the flower, 
` which, though without an embryo-sac, has a stigma-like disk at ‘its 
apex. Welwitschia. thus presents the hitherto unique case of a struc- 
turally hermaphrodite-flowered gymnospermous plant. From the want 
of the embryo-sae, the ovules in the hermaphrodite flowers are abortive, 
and after flowering the whole of the female :portion turns brown and 
withers. The fertile ovules occur in larger cones, and have not been 
noticed on the same plant with the male, so that the cones are func- 
tionally unisexual, and the plant is probably truly dicecious, Seti | 
being effected by insects. 
BOTANICAL NEWS. 
The ‘ Gardeners’ Chronicle’ states that Dr. Lindley has resigned his office of Se 
cretary of the Horticultural Society, “from d longer to fulfil the duties — 
of the office he has occupied for more than forty yea Mr. W. W. Saun ders 
is to be proposed, at the next Anniversa rsary Meeting, fo: this vacancy. 
M. Alphonse De Candolle, in a letter to us, dated January 29, says: “f am 
now correcting the proof-sheets of the first fascicule of volume fifteen of the i 
* Prodromus; which will contain the Laurineæe by Meissner, the Aristolochia by — 
Duchartre, Br Begoniacee by myself, and several small Natural Orders allied to | 
'uphorbiace, E 
Seiya MS the Cape of Good Hope mention the death of Dr. L. Pappe - 
~ Colonial Botanist, and author of * Silva Capensis,’ * Flore Capensis Sanae 
dromus’ (two editions), and, in conjunction with the Honourable Rawson W- - 
Rawson, of the ‘ Synopsis rlisus Africe Australis, three octavo pamphlets 
published at Cape Town between the years 1850-58, 3 
- Charles Moore, the Director of the Botanic Gardens at Sydney, is about 
to publish a Prost aer of the Ferns indigenous to New South Wales and i 
adjacent Count: 2 
On the 2nd of Decetüber, Professor Parlatore delivered, in ose Toti : 
School of the Museum of Natural Hist tory, at Florence, * Parole n Morte di 
og Matteo Blytt,” in which the merits of that botanist were dwelt ipi i viti on 
lo uence, 
“Botanists are familiar with the results of Dr. Parry’s 
