Feb. 



*5j 



NA TURE 



c,n 



they were eventually snowed up and covered with snow. This 

 possibility may have before been started, but seems to me to be 

 reasonable and probable. K. Busk 



Athenaeum, February 2 



Our Future Clocks and Watches 



[F clocks are to strike at all, surely once per hour is insufficient, 

 while four times is excessive ; the high hour-numbers even now 

 are inconvenient to count, and with the quarters heard alone it 

 is possible to make a mistake of an hour. I cannot but think, 

 then, on the whole, that the necessities of ship-life have long 

 driven mariners into the very best method, free from all diffi- 

 culties, and that, whatever our way of noting hours, we could do 

 no better than adopt the naval half-hour sinkings for land-clocks, 

 recommencing with each four-hour watch. Some confusion with 

 the existing ways, as long as they survive, is inevitable, and 

 equal whatever change is made. 



A mistake of four hours is just as unlikely as one of twelve. 

 We should probably soon find names for the different four-hour 

 divisions ; for example, we might denote each half-hour by some 

 letter or cypher. Edward I.. Garbett 



7 HE LIFE-HISTOR Y OF THE L YCOPODIACEJS 

 "THE area within which really notable discoveries are 

 *■ possible — at any rate amongst the higher plants — in 

 the field of vegetable morphology is becoming very 

 circumscribed. For some time the complete life-history 

 of the Lycopodiacca has been a missing chapter in our 

 text-books. Hofmeister, like others, had unsuccessfully 

 sown the spores, and he could only speculate as to the 

 probability of their producing — if the proper conditions 

 could be known — a prothallium like ferns. And Spring, 

 the monographer of the group, had hazarded the extra- 

 ordinary theory that the existing representatives of the 

 group were only represented by male plants, the females 

 having been lost in some remote geological catastrophe. 



De Bary made in this, as in so many other fields, the 

 first real advance. He described in 1858 the early stages 

 of the germination of the spores of Lycopodium inun- 

 datum. But just as Hofmeister had failed to get the 

 spores to germinate at all, so De Bary failed to get the 

 development of the prothallium to advance beyond a very 

 early stage. Thus matters stood till 1872, when Fank- 

 hauser had the good fortune to find, in a botanical excur- 

 sion, young plants of Lycopodium annotinum, still united 

 to their parent prothallium. 



For my own part, I have always felt that it might be 

 the chance of any wide-awake observer to turn the next 

 unread page in this curiously reserved history. And I 

 have never failed to remind the younger botanists who 

 have consulted me as to a promising direction for work 

 that this was a possibility they should never lose sight of. 

 Within the last few days, however, two fresh contribu- 

 tions to the subject have come into my hands. 



The first number of the Botanisches Centralblatt for 

 this year contains a paper by Bruchmann, who has, if I 

 mistake not, already done some good work in the vegeta- 

 tive morphology of Lycopodium. He has had the good 

 luck to repeat Fankhauser's happy find, and to have come 

 across, at the end of August last, living prothallia of the 

 same species. 



But the paper ' which will mark its epoch in the history 

 of Lycopodium is that for a separate copy of which I am 

 indebted to my friend, Dr. Treub, the accomplished 

 director of the renowned Botanic Garden at Buitenzorg 

 in Java. Six years ago, when he had no thought that he 

 would ever be able to prosecute botanical research in the 

 tropics, he also made, as so many others have done, un- 

 successful attempts to obtain the development of Lycopo- 

 dium spores. On his arrival at Buitenzorg, he lost no 

 time in endeavouring to find the prothallia of tropical 

 species. He seems to have all but succeeded in dis 



du Jardln Botaniqnc J. . 



pp. 107-138, 



covering those of Lycopodium cernuum — but for an acci- 

 dental circumstance which threw him off the scent — in 

 the first year of his residence there. Subsequently, he 

 sowed the spores on the trunks of trees, and after a delay 

 which led him to abandon any hope of success, he ob- 

 tained satisfactory results from one of the sowings. Now 

 he is acquainted with the prothallia of three species of 

 Lycopodium, and hopes to be able to describe even a 

 fourth. 



In the present paper, which is illustrated with nine 

 admirable plates, Dr. Treub gives an exhaustive account 

 of the prothallium of Lycopodium cernuum. It is curious 

 to observe, however, that in artificial cultures he did not 

 succeed in carrying the development further than De 

 Bary had done some time ago with L. inundatum. Fortu- 

 nately, prothallia which he discovered under spontaneous 

 conditions of development exactly fitted in where the 

 others stopped. 



The adult prothallium is a very singular structure, con- 

 sisting of a sort of short cylindrical axis, half immersed 

 in the soil at one end, where it is furnished with root- 

 hairs. The upper extremity bears a tuft of small leaf-like 

 lobes. The archegonia and antheridia are found on the 

 upper part of the cylindrical axis, forming a kind of ring 

 or crown near the tuft of lobes. The prothallium therefore 

 presents a type morphologically more differentiated than 

 is met with elsewhere amongst the vascular cryptogams. 

 While this is the case with the sexual generation 

 (oophore), the spore-bearing generation (sporophore) in 

 its embryonic stage is less differentiated than is the case, 

 for example, in the fern. The embryonic root is sup- 

 pressed, and the whole embryo, which is wholly paren- 

 chymatous, approximates in its morphological characters 

 to those of the prothallium. 



W. T. Thiselton Dyer 



JOHN GWYN JEFFREYS 

 T T is with much regret we have to announce the death 

 * of this veteran conchologist. Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys, 

 who was in his usual health the day before, and in the 

 evening attended at the lecture given by his son-in-law, 

 Prof. Moseley, at the Royal Institution, was seized on 

 Saturday morning, January 24, with a fit of apoplexy, 

 and at five o'clock on the same afternoon passed peace- 

 fully away. He was the last, or almost the last, of a band 

 of marine zoologists of a former generation who had been 

 his friends. Dilwyn, Cocks, and Couch ; Fleming, Gray, 

 Forbes, Alder, and Albany Hancock ; Johnston and 

 William Thompson ; Barlee and Waller are names of 

 the past. 



Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys was born at Swansea on January 18, 

 1809, and had thus just completed his seventy-sixth year. 

 While a boy he showed a taste for natural history, col- 

 lecting the insects and shells of South Wales. When 

 only nineteen he contributed a paper to the Linnean 

 Transactions, " A Synopsis of tlie Pneumonobranchous 

 Mollusca of Great Britain" and from that date until the 

 present time he has been adding by his writings to our 

 knowledge of the molluscan fauna of Europe and the 

 North Atlantic. His most important works are : " British 

 Conchology," in five volumes, and a series of papers (un- 

 fortunately unfinished) in the Proceedings of the Zoo- 

 logical Society, on " The Mollusca of the ' Lightning' 

 and ' Porcupine ' Expeditions, 1 868-70." At the age of 

 twenty he was elected a F.L.S., and in 1840 F.R.S., and 

 he was an honorary LL.D. of St. Andrews. He was one 

 of the most regular members of the Royal Society Club, 

 and took great interest in the meetings of the British 

 Association, which he almost always attended, taking a 

 more active part in 1848, when Local Treasurer at the 

 first meeting at Swansea, in 1880, when a Vice-President 

 at the last meeting held in the same town, and in 1877, 

 when President of the Biological Section. For many 



