LTNITEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON", XCIU 



eve of publication ; the plants figured are selected from those of the 

 Kew Herbarium which appeared the best for illustrating new or 

 interesting generic or sectional forms, or comparatively little-known 

 floras. Mr. Wilson Saunders has commenced a somewhat similar, 

 but partially coloured work, entitled ' Refugium Botanicnm,' con- 

 taining figures of the most curious species that flower in his rich 

 and varied collection at Reigate. Mr. Ilardwicke's new and me- 

 thodically arranged edition of * English Botany ' has now nearly com- 

 pleted its eighth volume. 



The plates for Dr. Welwitsch's " Sertum Angolense," to appear in 

 our Transactions, are all engraved, and we are in great hopes of 

 very soon being able to place the text in the printer's hands. In 

 the meantime he has published in our Transactions, in conjunction 

 with Mr. Cui'rey, the Fungi collected in his Angola expedition ; and 

 his terrestrial and freshwater MoUusca have been published by 

 M. A. Morelet at Paris, together with a general introductory sketch 

 of his arduous and most successful journey. 



I am obliged, with regard to Britain as to other countries, to pass 

 over the numerous contributions to Botany which have appeared in 

 the shape of detached papers in our Transactions and Journals, in 

 the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and of 

 various provincial societies, in Seemann's Journal of Botany and 

 the Annals of Natural History, besides local Floras, and other works 

 of local botanical interest. 



In general Biology a great advance has been made by the pub- 

 lication of the first portion of that wonderful series of observations, 

 collection and verification of recorded facts, and methodical studies 

 upon which Mr. Darwin has founded his theories on the modifica- 

 tion of species through successive ages. In one of the first notices 

 of this " Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," in 

 a journal of literature and science of large circulation, I was not a 

 little surprised to find the assertion that these volumes " contain 

 nothing more in support of the hypothesis of origin by selection than 

 a more detailed reasseveration of the guesses founded upon the so- 

 called variations of pigeons." The most charitable interpretation to 

 be put upon this sentence is, that the critic had reviewed the book 

 from preconceived notions without reading it; and this sweeping 

 condemnation might have been passed over in silence ; but as the 

 same journal, and possibly the same critic, asserts, in another num- 

 ber, that natural selection is rapidly declining in scientific favour, 

 and as similar vague denunciations and sneers at Darwinism find 



