914 



The first meeting of the Club was held on Monday evening, March 

 7, 1853 ; the President, Robert Bentley, Esq., F.L.S., in the chair. 



Donations to the herbarium were announced as follows: — Speci- 

 mens from the South -Sea Islands, by Mr. E. May, Jun., Tottenham ; 

 British plants from Messrs. Brady (Leeds), Copney (Plymouth), Par- 

 ker, and Reynolds (London). 



The President gave an inaugural address, which was listened to 

 with much interest. 



A paper by Mr. H. B. Brady, of Leeds, announcing a new York- 

 shire station for Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense, was read. 



Effects of Ammonia upon Vegetation. 



Mr. Penney presented a translation of M. Ville's papers ' On the 

 Effects produced upon Vegetation by Ammonia added to the Air,' 

 which were published in the ' Comptes Rendus ' of October 4 and 

 November 2, 1852. « 



Henry Deane, Esq., Vice-President of the Pharmaceutical Society, 

 sent a communication confirmatory of M. Ville's statements, being an 

 account of some experiments, made at various periods during three 

 or four years, upon plants in greenhouses. The plants were watered 

 with solutions of ammoniacal salts ; and the resulting phenomena were 

 similar to those recorded by M. Ville. 



The Phytologist Club. 



One Hundred and Forty-third Sitting. — Saturday, March 26, 1853. 

 Mr. Newman, President, in the chair. 



Gymnogramma leptophylla in the Channel Islands. 



The President had heard, through the kindness of his friend Mr. 

 Henry Hagen, that this pretty little species had been found growing 

 on a bank in Jersey. It appears that the late lamented Mr. William 

 Christy, so well known for his enthusiastic love of botany, resided 

 for some months near the spot where the species occurs ; and it is 

 also a fact that Gymnogramma leptophylla was a fern which Mr. 

 Christy took great pleasure in cultivating, raising it, year after year, 

 from seed ; but no evidence has yet been offered to show that he 

 attempted to introduce it into the Channel Islands. 



