August 15, 1889] 



NATURE. 



371 



the desire that this nomenclature may be gradually 

 adopted for bodies already known ; the prefix di- to be 

 used as at present, to denote bodies formed by double 

 substitution (proposed by M. Hanriot). 



(8) The different carbon atoms of naphthalene anthra- 

 cene, phenanthrene, fluorene, carbazol, acenaphthene, 

 acridine, shall be numbered as follows : — 



,/\V\. 



61. 



^' 10 ^'^ 

 5 4 



Naphthalene. 



5 10 4 

 Anthracene. 



8 10 9 T 



5 



Phenanthrene. 



8 NH I 



5 4 



Carbazol. 



S 4 

 Acenaphthene. 



(Proposed by M. Noelting. 



(9) The proposition to denote the carbon atoms of 

 quinolcine by a, /3, 7 for the pyridine ring, and o, 7/1, p, a 

 (ortho, meta, para, ana) in the benzine ring,^ which had 

 been voted at the Sectional meeting, was adjourned by a 

 vote of 42 against 26, and referred to the Permanent 

 Committee. 



After the carrying of the resolutions, M. Friedel made 

 a short speech, in which he thanked especially the foreign 

 members for their attendance and help. Some people 

 might, he said, think that the Section had accomplished 

 but little ; that, however, was not his opinion : their aim 

 had been to help workers in their work, and nothing 

 could be more conducive to this aim than the use of the 

 same language among the chemists of all countries. He 

 felt sure that their efforts would prove fruitful in the 

 future, and he hoped that by next year the International 

 Committee would be able to report such serious progress 

 as to justify the summoning of another Congress. 



Thus terminated the formal proceedings of the Section 

 and Congress, which had been marked throughout by the 

 greatest good feeling among the savants of the various 

 nations represented. On Sunday the Congress was 

 brought to a final close by a banquet offered to the 

 foreign members at the Terminus Hotel. 



THE REV. M. J. BERKELEY. 



THE death of our great English mycologist has fol- 

 lowed very close upon that of our great English 

 lichenologist. Both of them were country clergymen of 

 the Church of England, both were over eighty, and the 

 career of both as botanical authors has extended over 

 half a century. 



The Rev. Myles Joseph Berkeley, M.A., F.R.S., was 

 born at Biggin, in the parish of Oundle, in the year 1803. 

 He was a descendant of the old historic family of that 

 name. He was educated at Rugby, and at Christ's Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, and graduated as fifth Senior Optime 

 in the year 1825. After holding a curacy at Margate, he 

 was appointed, in 1833, incumbent of two small parishes 

 near Wansford, in his native county. Here he remained 

 for thirty-five years, actively engaged in the performance 



' Lellmann's notation. 



of his parochial work. His stipend was small and his 

 family large, and he had to supplement his clerical 

 income by taking private pupils. This of course ab- 

 sorbed a great deal of his leisure, but his industry and 

 force of character were so great that he got through, in 

 addition, an enormous amount of scientific work. In 

 1868 he was appointed to the more valuable living of 

 Sibbertoft, near Market Harborough, which he held until 

 his death, on July 30. During the last ten years his 

 health has failed, and in 1879 he presented his botanical 

 collections to Kew, and, since that time, has published 

 scarcely anything. 



His attachment to botany must have begun very early 

 in life, for I remember him saying, when we were speak- 

 ing about a certain botanical examination, that he had 

 not set any questions that he could not have answered 

 when he was six years old. His friends thought he would 

 have taken a higher degree at Cambridge if he had not 

 given so much attention to natural history. His first 

 book, "Gleanings of British Algas," appeared in 1833. 

 It deals mainly with minute microscopic types. The 

 book which made his reputation was his " Monograph of 

 the British Fungi," which forms the third volume of 

 Hooker's " British Flora," published in 1836 This was 

 the only hand-book of the British species in existence 

 up to 1871, so that for thirty-five years it was the indis- 

 pensable companion of every worker. The " Systema 

 Mycologicum" of Fries, which summarized most ably all 

 that was then known about genera and species, came out 

 — the three volumes from 1821 to 1829, its "Supplement" 

 in 1830, and the " Elenchus " in 1828 ; so that these were 

 just in time to serve Berkeley as a foundation to build 

 upon. From 1836 to 1870 he was the universal referee 

 for everyone in this country who wanted information 

 about fungi. Collections poured in upon him from 

 home and abroad, and he described many thousands 

 of genera and species, a large proportion of which 

 were new, in Hooker's " Antarctic Floras," Hooker's 

 Journals of Botany, the Transactions and Journal of 

 the Linnean Society, and in the Annals of Natural His- 

 tory. During the latter part of the time he worked a 

 great deal in conjunction with the late Mr. C. E. Broome, 

 of Bath, who had abundant leisure and industry, com- 

 bined with an unconquerable disinclination to publish on 

 his own account, and in every Fungus-list " Berk, et 

 Broome" is an often-quoted authority. Beginning with 

 Oidiinn Tiickeri, he gave special attention to the fungoid 

 pests of agriculture and horticulture ; and it was, more 

 than anything else, his papers on the potato disease that 

 obtained for him the small pension that was granted to 

 him during the last twenty years of his life. In 1857 

 he published a general " Introduction to Cryptogamic 

 Botany," which has had a wide circulation. There has 

 been no other book of a similar scope in the English 

 language till this present year. His " Outlines of British 

 Fungology," published in i860, contains twenty-four 

 plates, illustrating a series of about 150 typical forms. 

 The text deals specially with the Hymenomycetes, and, 

 for the other orders, does not go much beyond a cata- 

 logue of the British genera and species. His "Hand-book 

 of the British Mosses," published in 1863, contains de- 

 scriptions and plates of all the species then known in 

 Britain. In the same year he was awarded the Biological 

 Gold Medal of the Royal Society, of which he was elected 

 a Fellow in 1879. But by this time his working days 

 were over, and in that year he presented to Kew his 

 entire fungus herbarium, followed, not long after, by his 

 books. His herbarium contains specimens of upwards 

 of 10,000 species, duly named and classified ; and it has 

 been estimated by Mr. G. E. Massee that it contains 

 type specimens of 4866 species described by himself, aid 

 that the full number of new species which he described 

 will not fall far short of 6000. 



For many years he acted as one of the botanical exa- 



