101 
the middle of February with three thousand herbarium specimens, 
some museum specimens, and many notes on observations made 
in the field. 
Respectfully submitted, 
J. K. SMALL, 
Head Curator of the Museums. 
CONFERENCE NOTES. 
The regular conference of the scientific staff and students of 
the Garden was held in the library on March 2. Mr Cc 
Benedict first discussed the Relationships of the Genera of the 
Vittarieae. 
According to the law of biogenesis or recapitulation, the stages 
of growth through which an organism passes in reaching maturity 
repeat, %. e., recapitulate, stages through which its type has 
passed in the course of its evolution. Considerable use is made 
of this law in conchology, where it is often possible in a single 
individual to trace all the growth stages of a single shell type. 
In plants, as for example in the study of the development of a 
given leaf type, it is necessary to take individual leaves from the 
earliest onward, but it seems probable that, with this difference, 
the law may be used equally well in the vegetable kingdom and 
the fern tribe, Vittarieae, seem to furnish a good example to 
illustrate it. 
The Vittarieae are a tribe of tropical ferns of the family Poly- 
podiaceae which includes most of our common species. One 
species grows in Florida, V. lineata (L.) Sw., there known as 
old man’s beard. It usually grows on palmettos, often forming 
a beard-like clump, the leaves being long and very narrow, only 
a few lines wide, and hanging down in a very good imitation of 
a beard. The venation of this species and of all Vittarias is 
very simple and consists merely of a single vein through the 
middle, giving off lateral veins at intervals. These run to the 
margin, then bend forward parallel to the midvein, and each 
one joins the one above it, making a single series of closed spaces 
or areas, ara! areolae (i. é., little areas) along each side 
of the midve 
