274 



Notes and Comments. 



H. Thomas and Prof. Nathorst, and ably summarised by Prof. 

 Seward in his presidential address to the Yorkshire Naturalists' 

 Union in 19 10. The section devoted to the Yorkshire Jurassic 

 plants is an important section of the present work. The 

 volume is dedicated to Professor Charles Rene Zeiller, and 

 deals with the Peteridospermese, Cycadofilices, Cordaitales, 

 and Cycadophyta. There is also an important section devoted 

 to Palaeozoic seeds. Each contains a scholarly summary of 

 all that has been published, in addition to the original work 

 of the author. The references to the literature on every 

 possible section will be a great boon to present and future 

 students. The value of the work is greater by the wealth of 

 illustration, there being over 250 in the present section ; and 

 for this we are doubtless indebted to the generosity of the 



Williamsonia whitbiensis. — A, male flower ; B, sporophyll with symangia. 



(After Nathorst). 



Cambridge University Press. 

 two of the smaller blocks. 



We are permitted to reproduce 



DUCKS AND PLANT DISPERSAL. 



Writing in The Selborne Magazine for July, the Rev. E. A. 

 Woodruffe-Peacock states ' Few Naturalists still grasp their 

 surroundings sufficiently to carefully watch what is going on 

 unobtrusively, yet actively, under their noses, as I may say. 

 So the poverty of illustrations of dispersal in Darwin's and 

 Wallace's works, and of other later writers, even such as the 

 the late Clement Reid, in "The Origin of the British Flora," 

 has not yet been supplemented by the present generation of 

 workers. Early in life my mind was turned, by Darwin's 

 notice of the seeds in the ball of clay on the foot of a Partridge, 

 to noting all questions of dispersal. The first almost that 

 struck me was the sowing abroad by young blackbirds (for 



[Naturalist, 



