IXXX PBOCEEDINGS OP THE 



pleted in 1860 an excellent enumeration of Tuscan plants, has un- 

 fortunately been disappointed in liis candidatesliip for more than 

 one botanical post, which would have afforded him the desired op- 

 portunities of prosecuting his favourite studies. He has, however, 

 published several short papers on European Cyperacese, and on 

 various phytological questions which he has investigated. 



r. Delpino has published at Florence an Essay on the Fertilizing- 

 apparatus in Phaenogamous Plants, which Hildebrand has reproduced 

 in the ' Botanische Zeitung,' with notes and additions, and of which 

 we have also a summary in Mr. Murray's ' Journal of Travel and 

 Natural History.' Delpino in this essay details his observations on 

 dichogamy and cross fertilization of insects, in confirmation of those 

 of Sprengel, Darwin, and Hildebrand, in the case of various plants 

 belonging to about twenty natural orders. Another pamphlet of his, 

 * Thoughts on Vegetable Biologj'^,' is purely speculative, without, as 

 far as I can discover, a single corroborative observation. He is a 

 great admirer of Darwin's views of affinity depending on descent, 

 but wholly discards Natural Selection, substituting for it, in plants, 

 " a plasmatic principle, endowed with intelligence," by means of 

 which he supposes that the plant itself modifies the forms of its 

 flowers so as to secure the necessary agency of insects in fertilizing 

 them. Pasquale, who has succeeded the late Dr. Gasparrini in the 

 professorship and direction of the Botanic Garden at Naples, has 

 published a Memoir on Heterophyllisra, and a few papers in the 

 Proceedings of the Neapolitan Academy. Detached accounts of 

 Italian and Sicilian plants, chiefly cryptogamic, have also appeared 

 in various Proceedings and Journals. 



Spain. 



In Spain the effects of a slight spur which had been given to the 

 study of Natural Science about the time when I visited Madrid in 

 1859 appears to have died away. I can find no announcement of 

 any biological publication, except an Enumeration or List of Spanish 

 Cryptogams by Colmeiro. I hear that Lange and Wilkomm's Syn- 

 opsis of the Spanish Flora is now likely to be continued ; but to 

 that the Spaniards themselves have not contributed. A very in- 

 teresting fact in the distribution of plants, that of a Dioscorea in- 

 habiting the Spanish Pyrenees, has also now been verified, and the 

 plant figured and described — again not by a Spaniard, but by Grenicr, 

 in the ' Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France.' I observe,, in 



