390 .BOTANICAL KEATS. 
Dr. Hofnieister, assisted by Drs. Pringsheim, De Eaiy, Imnachj and Sachs, 
is about to publish a ' Handbooli of Physiological Botany.' 
Dr, C. Bolle has had the good fortune to discover, in the island of Isehia, a 
new Moss, Trematodon Solmsii, the third European species of the genus ; and 
about Monaco, a new Narcissus {N. AscJtersonii), both of which he describes, 
together with new forms of l^orth German plants, in some Itahan and German 
papers, reprints of which hare been forwarded to us. That nuisance of our 
rivers, JSlodea Canadensis {Anacliaris Alsinastrum) ^ a plant which has now 
ten synonyms, is also, Dr. Bolle reports, spreading in Prussia. 
The third part of Seemann'a ^Plora Titiensis,' completing the Polypetalous 
Orders, is now ready. . 
M. Maximowiez, of St. Petersburg, is writing a Flora of Japan, for which 
he has collected considerable materials during his stay in that empire, 
Mr. Alexander Silver, of Aberdeen, has jutt brought out * Outlines of Ele- 
mentaiy Botany, for the use of Students.' (London : Henry Eenshaw.) 
Botanical Society of EDiNBtiEaii, first meeting for the thirtieth ses- 
sion on 9th November, Dr. Alexander Dictson, j)rcsident, in tlie chair, 
delivered an opening address, in which he alluded to the progress and pros- 
perity of the Society. After briefly considering the events of the last ses- 
sion, Dr. Dickson discussed the question as to the nature of the female Coni- 
ferous flower, with special reference to the arguments of Dr. Hooter on 
WehvitscJila. Dr. Dickson contended that the absence of a proper stigma in 
these plants could not be held to indicate the absence of carpels, because a 
stigma \\'as no necessary or essential characteristic of a carpel, being in some 
cases developed not from the carpel at all, bnt from the placenta. The absence 
of vessels in the presnmed carpels of Conifera had been urged by Dr. Hooker 
as an objection to the carpellary view, but Dr. Dickson thought there was no 
d priori improbability that carpellary leaves of reduced type should be desti- 
tute of vessels, seeing that ordinary leaves in certain cases are destitute of 
vessels^ as in the FodosiemonacecB. Dr. Dickson said that next to the results 
of organogenic observation, the analogy which, on the carpellary view, the 
Conifer{B would present to certain Loranthacem^ afforded the best argument of 
a positive character in favour of that view ; that in both families we should 
have ovules reduced to naked nuclei, solitary and basilar in the ConifercE^ and 
frequently so in the LoranihacecB ; that in both there would be a tendency to 
the production of what Schleiden termed " Gemmnla infera,^'' or an inferior 
ovule, where, from preponderating development of the very base of the ovule, 
it becomes more OiT less imbedded in the substance of the floral axis, and that 
in both families there is the occasional occurrence of a plurality of embryo 
sacs, etc. Dr. Dickson asserted that the onus prolandl lay with the supporters 
of Robert Brown's hypothesis of naked ovules, and that no botanist should 
accept that hypothesis, involving as it does the assumption of a great anomaly, 
unless he were able to convince himself that the caq^ellary view is untenable. 
The following communications w^ere read :— T. List of Lichens collected in 
Otago, New Zcaknd. By Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay. Of the Lichens, 62 species, 
or 50 per cent., are common to Britain ; 30 species, or 2t per c^nt , are con- 
