PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 457 
for study or reference, not the glorification of botanists; and, secondly, that 
changing an established name is very different from giving a name to a 
new plant. * * %* The rule that long-established custom amounts to 
prescription, and may justify the maintenance of names which form excep- 
tions to those laws which should be strictly adhered to in naming new 
plants, is unfortunately now frequently ignored, and the changes proposed 
in universally admitted names are producing in many instances the greatest 
confusion.” 
Another paper of a physiological cast was that of the Rev. G. Henslow, 
“On the Absorption of Rain and Dew by the green parts of Plants.” It 
appears that earlier experimenters were fully persuaded that leaves could 
and did absorb dew and rain. Duchartre, in 1857, reversed this view. 
Mr. Henslow now maintains, from his own experiments, that absorption 
does take place soon after the sun has risen, and under other predisposing 
circumstances; thus the common notion of gardeners is right, and the 
late current teaching of science wrong. 
“Notes on Cleistogamous Flowers, chiefly of Viola, Owalis, and Im- 
patiens,” was the title of a paper read by Mr. Alfred W. Bennett. 
Dr. Thomas Boycott exhibited a great blanket-like sheet of Chara 
(Nitella, sp. ?), got from a dried pond in St. Leonard's Forest, Sussex. To 
zoologists and microscopists the rare material entangled in this vegetable 
mat would be of the highest interest. 
Specimens of growing India-rubber trees from West Africa were shown 
by Mr. Thomas Christy; and Dr. R. C. A. Prior brought forward a branch 
in blossom of Colletia cruciatica, grown out of doors in Somersetshire by the 
Rey. W. Sotheby.—J. Murtz. 
ZoouoaicaL Society oF Lonpon. 
November 5, 1878.—A. Grote, Esq., Vice-President, in the chair. 
The Secretary read a report on the additions that had been made to the 
Society’s Menagerie during the months of June, July, August, September 
and October, 1878, and called attention to some of the more remarkable 
accessions which had been received during that period. 
A communication received from Mr. J. H. Gurney contained a memo- 
randum from the late Mr. E. C. Buxton, stating that Astwrinula mono- 
grammica, observed on the Eastern Coast of Africa, had a song which was 
heard morning and evening. 
An extract was read from a letter addressed to the Secretary by 
Dr. A. B. Meyer respecting a supposed new Bird of Paradise, obtained 
on the West Coast of New Guinea. 
8.N 
