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NATURE 
229 
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less passed over. The fruit I possess is attached to a | the printing of the third and concluding volume will shortly be 
branch, and was found during the last visit to Alum Bay 
on which I was able to collect any fossils, for within a 
few months of that time the leaf-bed disappeared with 
the recession of the cliff. It is the only Conifer known 
from Alum Bay, or even from the Lower Bagshot forma- 
tion, and all others should be erased from the list. 
The second species is from Bournemouth, and is known 
from even more ample material. The foliage is also 
dimorphic, the distichous type being however very sub- 
ordinate and confined, as in ?. cuvpressina and other living 
species, to short, simple branchlets. A complete seedling 
plant with its roots possesses an irregular distichous 
foliage something like that of the Alum Bay species, but 
becomes imbricated towards the root. The young plant 
seems to have retained this character for some time, as 
shown by several branchlets. It then appears to have 
assumed a semi-imbricated foliage, which is exceedingly 
graceful. The full-grown tree principally possessed 1m- 
bricated foliage, and the position the distichous branchlets 
occupied can only be inferred from existing allies. The 
largest branch is about fifteen inches long, and is com- 
posed of about thirty branchlets ; but this is surpassed 
in elegance by another seventeen inches long, whose stem 
is still imperfect. The simple branchlets are very slender, 
about six inches long, and were often shed singly, but 
both branches and branchlets, as I here term them, were, 
I think, articulated and shed naturally, and not broken 
off by wind. The fruit is a berry of about half an inch 
diameter, clustered in three, shortly stalked, and borne on 
an imbricated branch, and the male catkins are in pairs 
and terminal. The tree was probably of large growth, 
and pendulous. A third form, which I cannot assign with 
equal reason to any genus but Podocarpus, has larger 
foliage. Both of these types seem extinct, with their 
nearest allies in the Australian region and the Oriental 
Island region of Wallace. 
In addition to these there are fruits from Sheppey which 
I believe to be podocarpous, one at least seeming identical 
with P. e/afa of Queensland. The whole of the forms will 
be published and fully illustrated by the Palaeontographical 
Society in their usual exhaustive manner. 
The study of the Tertiary Coniferz, together with that 
of the ferns, has already led to some not unimportant 
rectifications. The Bovey Tracey beds have been exactly 
correlated with those of Bournemouth, and now the Mull, 
and I believe also the North of Ireland beds, can be 
clearly shown to be Eocene. I also hope in my next 
journey to Iceland to complete the correlation of the 
Tertiary beds there, and of Scotland and Ireland, with 
those of Greenland, which I cannot but regard, from 
whatever aspect they are viewed, as of considerably earlier 
age than Miocene. J. STARKIE GARDNER 
NOTES 
WE are glad to see in the recently published number of the 
Fournal of the Linnean Society Mr. Bentham’s important paper 
on the Gramineae, giving the critical results of his examination 
of the leading groups and genera of that important family, 
Having been read so recently as November 3, 1881, it has been 
printed and issued to the Fellows with commendable rapidity. 
We understand that our distinguished English botanist is, not- 
withstanding his recent severe domestic affliction and his advanced 
age, in excellent health, and that he is daily engaged in the 
Herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Kew, in the continued pre. 
paration of the Genera Plantarum—the monumental work on 
the genera of all known flowering plants, of which the first in- 
stalment was published in 1862. Sir Joseph Hooker and Mr. 
Bentham have been occupied with its elaboration for the last 
quarter of a century, and it will be with feelings of no small 
satisfaction that all students of systematic botany will learn that 
commenced, 
Messrs. MACMILLAN AND Co. will shortly publish an 
account of the late Prof. James Clerk Maxwell, by Prof. Lewis 
Campbell, of St. Andrews, and Mr. William Garnett, late 
Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. We understand that 
Prof. Campbell was Maxwell’s intimate associate in early life, 
and Mr. Garnett was associated with him as demonstrator at the 
Cavendish Laboratory from its opening in 1873 until Prof, Max- 
well’s death in 1879. The work will consist of (1) a biographical 
outline by Prof. Campbell, with selections from correspondence ; 
(2) by Mr, Garnett, a popular account of Maxwell’s chief con- 
tributions to science ; and (3) a collection of his poems, a few of 
which are already known to the public, while the greater 
number of them will now be published for the first time. 
The book will be illustrated with one or more steel plates 
of portraits, and a series of outline sketches of early scenes, 
done by Prof. Maxwell’s cousin, Mrs. Hugh Blackburn (J.B.), 
from drawings made by herself at the time ; also with coloured 
and other diagrams explanatory of his scientific work, some of 
which are taken from original water-colour sketches of his own, 
Not to dwell here on Prof. Maxwell’s eminence as a man of 
science—the originality and depth of his character, his religious 
earnestness, his amiability, and his quaint ironical humour, may 
be expected to render this presentation of him by intimate 
friends more than ordinarily attractive to many readers outside 
the scientific world. The whole will be comprised in an octavo 
volume of about 5co pages. 
UNDER the direction of the Trustees of the Gilchrist Educa- 
tional Trust a course of scientific lectures by Mr. Lant Carpenter 
has just been given in five Lancashire towns. The total audiences 
were from 3500 to 4000 per week, chiefly artizans, who maintained 
their interest to the very end—the same people coming night 
after night—and in some instances going to another-town in the 
same week to hear the lecture over again. The lectures were 
well illustrated by experiments and by the photographic diagrams, 
&c., in the oxhydrogen lantern. The latest developments of 
science were treated of, including the storage of energy and the 
electrical transmission of power. At the close of the course, 
hearty votes of thanks (with requests for other courses) were 
passed to the Gilchrist trustees and to the lecturer. 
THE staff of the Russian observing station on the Lena left St. 
Petersburg on December 27. MM. Yurgens and Eigner are 
intrusted with the astronomical, magnetical, and meteorological 
; observations, and Dr. Bunge will make researches in zoology, 
botany, and geology. They expect to reach Irkutsk with their 
instruments, in two months, and to begin next spring their 
journey to Yakutsk, so as to be able to open the polar station at 
the mouth of the Lena, on August 1, 1882. 
THE rate of the cricket’s chirp varies with the temperature, 
becoming faster as the latter rises. Recently a writer in the 
Salem Gazette (Mass.) gave the following rule for estimating the 
temperature of the air by the number of chirps made by crickets 
per minute :—‘‘ Take seventy-two as the number of strokes per 
minute at 60° temperature, and for every four strokes more add 
1°; for every four strokes less deduct the same.” Ina letter to 
the Popular Science Monthly, Margarette W. Brook gives an ac- 
count of observations she made with a view to testing this rule, on 
twelve evenings, from September 30 to October 17, Hercolumn 
of temperatures as computed by the rate of vibration shows a 
close agreement with that of temperatures recorded by the 
thermometer, 
THE industrial manufacture of oxygen has engaged much 
thought, while the uses, on a large scale, of that agent have not 
been very exactly determined. At Passy there are now works 
