132 



NATURE 



{Dec. 12, 1878 



In a note on "Colonial Grasses as Paper-making Materials," 

 the Colonics and India suggests the poFsibility of utilising some 

 of the coarse grasses which grow with such provoking pertinacity 

 in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, &c. The Typha 

 <ingustifoli.it for example, a large kind of tussock grass (known 

 as raupo to the New Zealand natives, who use it for thatching 

 their houses), which grows in enormous quantities in the swampy 

 flats near rivers and lakes, may, like its neighbour, the Phormium 

 tenax, prove a rival to Esparto grass ; the iviivi, a coarse, wiiy 

 kind of grass, growing chiefly in the interior of North Island, is 

 also worth an experiment. In New South Wales the gi-ass-cloth 

 plant {Bohmeria nivea) has already received some attention, 

 being used for the manufacture of a fine kind of matting. South 

 Africa is probably richest of all in its grasses ; in the great Karroo 

 district thousands of square miles are covered with the twaa- 

 grass, the sour-veldt, and the sweet-veldt, the importance of 

 which as fodder may be found equalled by their value as 

 paper-making material. Still more likely to prove valuable is 

 the Stipa capensis, a member of the family to which Esparto 

 belongs. 



The Transactions of the Cumberland -Association for the 

 Advancement of Literature and Science, Part III., 1877-78, 

 edited by Mr. Clifton Ward, is a thickish volume containing 

 papers by members of some of the Associated Societies. The 

 first paper, however, after various reports, is that by Sir George 

 Airy, on the " Probable Condition of the Interior of ^the 

 Earth," a report of which we gave at the time of its delivery; 

 accompanying it is a diagram;of anndeal earth. Mr. Ward has a 

 paper on " Quartz in the Lake District ; " Mr. C. Smith one on 

 ** Boulder Clay ; " Mr. Pickering, on a " Submerged Forest at 

 St. Bees ; " and Mr. Fisher Crosthwaite gives an interesting 

 account of Peter Crosthwaite, who, at the end of the last and 

 beginning of the i^resent centuries, did much to promote science 

 in the district. 



M. J. PoLiAKOFF, who was sent last summer by the St. 

 Petersburg Academy of Sciences to examine the remains of the 

 stone period in the governments of Yaroslaff and Vladimir, gives 

 the following results of his explorations : — Very interesting 

 collections were found in excavating a mound, close by Yaroslaff; 

 numerous skulls of men of the neolithic period v/ere discovered 

 here, together with polished silex hatchets and hammers, and 

 numerous banes of animals of existing species. Far richer col- 

 lections were found in the valley of the Oka River, in the dis- 

 trict of Murom. Here, in the sandy mounds of the valley, as 

 well as in the alluvium of the river, INI. Poliakoff has^discovered 

 immense quantities of silex implements, polished and rough, of 

 the most varied forms. The implements were always found to- 

 gether \\i\h. bones of the Castor fiber, the Stis scrofa ferus, and 

 the Bos primigenius, none of which exist now in those regions. 

 Besides, he also discovered vestiges of old wood buildings, very 

 like the lacustrian dwellings of Switzerland. The most important 

 discovery during these explorations was made by M. Poliakoff, 

 in company with Count Uraroff, close by Karacharovo Town, 

 in a very old lake alluvium, being a somewhat washed-up glacier 

 deposit. Here they found rough stone implements of the paleo- 

 lithic period, together with bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, 

 and the Bos prisons. The character of the deposits proved 

 without doubt the co-existence of man with those extinct mammals 

 in Russia, as well as in other parts of Europe. After having 

 finished his explorations, M. Poliakoff made a journey in 

 Western Em-ope to study the chief museums, and to compare 

 the implements he has collected during many years in Russia 

 and Siberia, Western and Eastern, with those of England, 

 Sweden, Denmark, France, and Switzerland, We expect that 

 this last journey of M. Poliakoff will accelerate the opening of 

 the projected pre-historic museum at St. Petersburg. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include two Black-faced Spider Monkeys (Atc/es ater), 

 two Rufous-vented Guaus (Penelope cristata) from U, S. of 

 Columbia, two Horsfield's Tortoises (Testttdo horsfieldi) from 

 Turkestan, presented by Mr, A, Gonzalez Carazo ; a Green 

 Monkey (CercopitJucus callitrichus) from West Africa, presented 

 by Mr. A. G. Lytton Squires; two Black-eared Marmosets 

 (llapale penicillata) from South-East Brazil, presented by the 

 Countess of Cotterham ; ' two Laughing Kingfishers (Dacelo 

 gigantea) from Australia, presented by Mr. Edwin A. B, 

 Crockett ; a Ceylon Jungle Fowl {Callus stanleyi) from Ceylon, 

 tv,o Japanese Pheasants {Phasianiis versicolor") from Japan, a 

 Grey Francolin (Francolinns ponticcriamts) from India, pre- 

 sented by Mr. Geo. Lyon Bennett ; a Rhomb-marked Snake 

 (Psammophylax rhomheatus), three Rufescent Snakes {Leptodira 

 riifescens) from South Africa, presented by the Rev. G. H, R. 

 Fisk, C.M,Z,S. ; a Kinkajou {Cercoleples caicdivolvulus) from 

 South America, three Snow Buntings {Plectropkanes nivalis), 

 European, purchased, 



ROYAL SOCIETY— THE PRESIDENT'S ANNI- 

 VERSAR Y ADDRESS 1 

 IL 

 T^HE modem development of botanical science, being that 

 ■*■ which occupies my own attention, is naturally that on which 

 I might feel especially inclined to dwell ; and I should so far 

 have the excuse that there is, perhaps, no branch of research 

 with the early progress of which this Society is more intimately 

 connected. 



One of our earliest secretai-ies, Robert Hooke, two centuries 

 ago, laboured long and successfully in the improvement of the 

 microscope as an implement of investigation. He was one of 

 the first to reap the harvest of discovery in the new fields of 

 knowledge to which it was the key, and if the results which he 

 attained have rather the aimless air of spoils gathered hither 

 and thither in a treasury, the very fulness of which was em- 

 barrassing, we must remember that we date the starting-point of 

 modern histology from the account given by Hooke in his 

 " Micrographia " (1667) of the structure of cork, which had 

 attracted his interest from the singularity of its physical proper- 

 tie?. Hooke demonstrated its cellular structure, and by an in- 

 teresting coincidence he was one of the first to investigate, at 

 the request, indeed, of the founder of the Society, Charles II., 

 the movement of the sensitive plant Mimosa pudica, one of a 

 class of phenomena which is still occupying the " attention of 

 more than one of our Fellows. In attributing the loss of tur- 

 gescence, which is the cause of the collapse of the petiole and 

 subordinate portions of the compound leaf which it supports, to 

 the escape of a subtle humour, he to some extent foreshadowed 

 the modern view which attributes the collapse of the cells to the 

 escape of water by some mechanism far from clearly understood 

 — whether fi-om the cell-cavities or from the cell-walls into the 

 intercellular spaces. 



Hooke having shown the way, Nehemiah Grew, who was also 

 secretary of the Royal Society, and Marcello Malpighi, Professor 

 of Medicine in the University of Bologna, were not slow to follow 

 it. Almost simultaneously (1671-3) the researches of these two 

 indefatigable students were presented to the Royal Society, and 

 the publication of two editions of Malpighi's works in London 

 prove how entirely this country was at that time regarded as the 

 head-quarters of this branch of scientific inquiry. We owe to 

 them the generalisation of the cellular structure, which Hooke 

 had ascertained in cork, for all other vegetable tissues. They 

 described also accurately a host of microscopic structures then 

 made known for the first time. Thus, to give one example, 

 Grew figured and described in several different plants the stomata 

 of the epidermis : — "Passports either for the better avolation of 

 superfluous sap, or the admission of air." 



With the exception of Leeuwenhoek no observer attempted j 

 to make any substantial addition to the labours of Grew and ; 

 Malpighi for more than a century and a half, and however re- 

 markable is the impulse which he gave to morphological studies, 

 the view of Caspar Wolff in the middle of the eighteenth cen- • 



' Address o£ Sir Joseph Hooker, C.B., K.C.S.I., the President, delivered j! 

 at the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Societj', on Saturday, November i| 



30, 1S73. Continued fr : ni p. 113. 



