November 11, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



651 



is to be found in the columns of such easily 

 accessible periodicals as the Philosophical 

 Magazine, the Proceedings of the London 

 Mathematical Society and the Proceedings 

 and Transactions of the Eoyal Society. A 

 full index of titles of papers up to date, with 

 short abstracts, is obtainable from the Jahr- 

 buch iiber die Fortschritte der Mathematik 

 and the Revue Semestrielle. 



It is, of course, unfair to ask anyone suc- 

 cessfully engaged on his or her own special 

 line of research to leave it for doubtful 

 profit in another. But much may be done 

 by those who have the direction of the 

 studies of the future generation by inter- 

 esting and suggestive courses of lectures. 

 Pure mathematicians will not find their 

 knowledge useless here, and students will 

 not be backward in following the footsteps 

 of such men as Laplace, Stokes, Kelvin, 

 von Helmholtz and Rayleigh. The tendency 

 towards the separation of pure mathematics 

 from their applications to physical problems 

 has already been arrested. The future pro- 

 gress of Hydrodynamics appears to demand 

 a closer union of these two branches of 

 science. 



Ernest W. Bkown. 



Haverfoed College. 



BOTANY AT THE ANNIVEBSABY MEETING 



OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR 



THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



I. 



Section G was organized Monday noon, 

 August 22d ; Dr. W. G. Farlow, President. 

 Regular sessions were held Tuesday morn- 

 ing, afternoon and evening and Thursday 

 morning and afternoon ; Wednesday and 

 Friday being given up to excursions. 

 Fifty-six papers were listed and forty-seven 

 were read. 



Thursday morning Mr. A. B. Seymour, 

 on behalf of the Committee on Bibliography, 

 appointed at the Madison meeting, made a 

 report of progress, which dealt principally 



with the question of subject arrangement. 

 On motion of the Secretary, the Section 

 directed the Committee to include Bacteri- 

 ology in the list of subjects covered by this 

 Bibliography. 



The large number of papers and the 

 limited time prevented full discussion in 

 many instances. Numerous excursions also 

 interfered more or less with the regular 

 work of the Section, but these ailorded 

 much pleasure to all who could take part in 

 them and were not least of the Boston at- 

 tractions. 



Visiting botanists were very hospitably 

 entertained, and altogether the Boston meet- 

 ing was exceedingly pleasant and profitable. 



The following abstracts have been pre- 

 pared with much care, in most cases from 

 the authors' MSS. or abstracts, and it is to 

 be hoped that they are reasonably free from 

 errors, and ample enough to give the many 

 who could not be present a clear idea of 

 what was said and done. 



TJie Carposporie Type of Reproduction of the 

 RhodophycecB. Bradley M. Davis. 

 Recent investigations in this field of re- 

 search show a tendency to depart from the 

 teachings of Fr. Schmitz. These were char- 

 acterized by the assumption of a second act 

 of fertilization in the Rhodophycese exhib- 

 ited in the phenomenon of fusion between 

 auxilliary cells and filaments or processes 

 put out by the carpogonium. The speaker 

 described studies of his own upon Champia, 

 showing their divergence from the doctrines 

 of Schmitz, and followed with a more gen- 

 eral discussion of the peculiar conditions 

 found here, expressing himself as in sym- 

 pathy, in the main, with the recently pub- 

 lished views of Oltmann. All evidence at 

 present points to the probability that the 

 cell-fusion phenomenon following the de- 

 velopment of the carpogonium is associated 

 with and the result of nutritive functions. 

 The entire group of Rhodophycese is so pe- 



