January 28, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



121 



she now shows that aerial flowers, when 

 buried at any period before fertilization, 

 produce the underground kind of fruit, and 

 not the kind they would have produced in 

 their normal position, from which the au- 

 thor draws conclusions as to the very power- 

 ful action of the environment upon seed 

 production and structure in this species. 



21. On the Formation of Corlc Tissue in Roots of 

 the Bosacece. Db. Martha Bunting, Phil- 

 adelphia High School. 



The author showed that intercellular 

 spaces exist between the cork cells in all 

 herbaceous and shrubby species of Eosacese 

 examined by her, but these are absent in 

 arborescent species ; protoplasm, nuclei and 

 starch grains exist in cork zones four to five 

 layers removed from the phellogen. 



22. The Structure and Development of Internal 

 Phloem in Gelsemium sempervirens, Ait. 

 Miss Caroline Thompson, University of 

 Pennsylvania. 



The mode of formation of the internal 

 phloem in the pith of this species, and the 

 way in which it crowds out the pith in its 

 growth, together with a remarkable ar- 

 rangement of the bundles in the petiole, are 

 fully described. 



The ofiBcers for the ensuing year are : 

 President, W. G. Farlow ; Vice-Presidents, 

 J. M. Macfarlane, G. F. Atkinson ; Secre- 

 tary-Treasurer, W. F. Ganong. 



The next meeting of this Society will be 

 held in December, 1898, in conjunction with 

 the American Society of Naturalists and 

 the Affiliated Societies. 



W. F. Ganong, 

 Secretary. 



BEPORI OF THE COWillTTEE ON ANTARCTIC 

 EXPLORATION. 



At the Philadelphia meeting of the Amer- 

 ican Society of Naturalists, held in Decem- 

 ber, 1895, a committee was appointed to in- 

 quire into the practicability and feasibility 

 of the exploration of the Antarctic Conti- 



nent. This committee made a report to 

 the Society, which was published in the 

 ' Records ' of the meeting of 1896, and the 

 committee was continued, with power to add 

 to its number. The following report was 

 received by the Secretary too late to be pre- 

 sented at the recent Ithaca meeting. 



H. C. BuMPUs, 



Secretary. 



Your Committee on Antarctic Explora- 

 tion respectfully report that they have 

 further considered the subject-matter which 

 was referred to them, but regret that they 

 are still not in a position to give assur- 

 ing indications as a result of their inquiries. 

 The seeming impossibility of obtaining a 

 suitable vessel and sailing crew in any of 

 the southern South American ports, and the 

 non-willingness of the Newfoundland fish- 

 ing and whaling interests to associate them- 

 selves with so distant enterprises as would 

 be involved in any form of Antarctic ex- 

 ploration, complicate the problem very ma- 

 terially, or, at least, set so high an estimate 

 upon general costs as to make the realiza- 

 tion of an expedition at a period of finan- 

 cial depression somewhat of an uncertainty. 

 It has been found impossible to ascertain 

 what form of assistance might be obtained 

 from the Australian whaling fleets, but the 

 letter which was addressed to your Com- 

 mittee by the late Baron Ferdinand von 

 Miiller intimates that little assistance of any 

 kind should be relied upon to come from 

 that quarter. 



Your Committee have been in corre- 

 spondence with Civil Engineer Robert E. 

 Peary, relative to the subject of the inquiry, 

 and have obtained through him valuable 

 data bearing upon general costs and possi- 

 bilities, notably in a series of estimates that 

 were submitted to him by Mr. H. J. Bull, 

 of Christiania, Norway, intended to cover 

 one or more joint commercial (whaling) 

 and scientific enterprises, and to yield a 



