LIl^NEAlSr SOCIETY OP LOTSTDON. XXXV 



physiological works, also in the language of the country, are re- 

 ported to me as well calculated to familiarize the Eussians with 

 our interesting science. 



The Japanese flora, to the peculiar interest of which I called 

 attention in my address of 1862, has been the subject of some 

 further investigations. Yery rich sets of excellent specimens 

 have been received from thence and from Formosa, collected by 

 Mr. Oldham, whose recent loss is so much to be deplored ; a por- 

 tion of the former has been published by Oliver in our own 

 Journal. Miquel, under the title of " Prolusio Plorse Japonicse," 

 has commenced a digest of the Japanese collections of Thunberg, 

 Siebold, Buerger, Pierot, and Textor, of which we have received 

 three parts in folio, although without plates : when these are gone 

 through, he proposes, in a second series, to go through the miscel- 

 laneous sets of Japanese plants in the Dutch herbaria. This 

 ought to give us a tolerably complete view of the Japanese flora ; 

 but we cannot but wish that the whole had been consolidated in 

 one enumeration, that some order had been followed in the 

 sequence of the families, and that some form had been adopted 

 more convenient than the folio, which the absence of illustrations 

 renders quite unnecessary. 



In East India we have many active botanists ; and partial 

 papers on Indian plants, by Aitchison, Anderson, Beddome, Dal- 

 zell, Edgeworth, Kurz, Thomson, and others, continue to be in- 

 serted, chiefly in our own Journal and Transactions, but also in 

 similar publications in India itself; and Thwaites's important 

 Enumeration of Ceylon Plants, which I mentioned in 1862, 

 is now complete. The progress, however, of the general Elora 

 of East India has, I regret to say, been much retarded by 

 the state of Dr. Thomson's health last winter ; but I trust he 

 will now be able again to take it up actively. The Dutch 

 botanists, with Miquel now at their head, continue to illustrate 

 the rich and, in many respects, little-known flora of their own 

 East-Indian possessions and neighbouring independent islands, 

 chiefly in the periodicals and Transactions enumerated in my last 

 year's Address. We have not, however, since then received any 

 continuation of the Annales Musei Botanici Lugduno-Batavi. 



For Mediterranean Asia and the Egypto-Arabic region we 

 have had detached papers in our Journal, especially by Lowne, on 

 the flora of the rich oasis at the southern end of the Dead Sea, and 

 by Eedhead, on that of the desert of Sinai. Kotschy has published 

 several papers in the Austrian Journals and Transactions ; and I 



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