60 Royal Society : — 



Osteorjraphie des Cetaces, v'lvants etfosslles. Par MM. van Bexuden 

 et Paul Gervais. Livraisons 9 & 10. Teste & Atlas. 



It is with great pleasure that I aunounce that I have received the 

 ninth and tenth livraisons of this work, which I feared had been stopped 

 bj' the French and German war ; and I hope that the work will now 

 proceed regularly. The parts contain the completiou of the text of 

 the description of the plates of the Mystlcetes, and is signed by P. J. 

 van Eeneden, and the commencement of the text of the Cetodontes, 

 and the description of the genus Cachalot (Physeter). The plates all 

 belong to the Cetodontes, and are marked as having been prepared 

 imder the superintendence of M. P. Gervais. In the pre%aous notice 

 of this work, entitled " Observations on the "Whales described in the 

 ' Osteographie des Cetaces ' of MM. van Beneden and Gervais," in 

 the 'Annals,' Sept. 1870, vol. vi. p. 193, I gave the history of 

 it, saying that the book was undertaken and pubhshed at the cost 

 of my esteemed friend M. van Beneden, aud the text written by 

 M. Gervais, which I did on the authority of a conversation with M. 

 Gervais. M. van Beneden, when he called upon me shortly after in 

 London, informed me that the book was published at the expense of 

 the publisher (was in fact a bookseller's speculation), and the descrip- 

 tion of the plates of the whales was written by him for the publisher. 

 I offered to make the correction in the next number of the ' Annals ; ' 

 but he begged me to let it remain as it was ; and believing that he 

 might have a private reason for his request, I obeyed his injunction. 

 But very shortly after M. van Beneden's return to Louvain he pub- 

 lished a statement as if I had never made the offer. He now signs 

 the end of the description of the Mystlcetes, or Whalebone-AVbales ; 

 and if the part which each author took iu the superintendence of 

 the work had been stated in the prospectus, this mistake would not 

 have occurred. — J. E. Gkat. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARXED SOCIETIES. 



EOYAL SOCIETY. 



June 19, 1873. — William Spottiswoode, M.A, Treasurer and Vice- 

 President, in the Chair. 



" On the Organization of the Fossil Plants of the Coal-measures. 

 —Part y. Asteropluillitesr By W. C. AVilliamsox, F.R.S., Pro- 

 fessor of Natural History in Owens College, Manchester. 



On two occasions the author directed attention, in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Eoyal Society (vol. xx. pp. 95 & 435), to the 

 structure of some stems which appeared to him to belong to the 

 well-kno\^ai genus Aster ophyllites, briefly poiuti]ig out at the same 

 time their apparent relations to a strobilus of which he had pre- 



