LINNEAN SOCIETY OP LONDON. XXXVll 



had completed the Compositse in the tliird volume, published 

 last year, and was actively proceeding with the fourth when he 

 was seized with the illness which has terminated fatally within 

 the last few days and added one more to the heavy list of 

 eminent botanists and excellent men whose loss during the twelve- 

 month we have to deplore. His last instructions before his de- 

 cease related to the means of securing the completion of his Mora 

 and the publication of the new edition he had prepared of his 

 ' Grenera of the Cape Flora.' 



In Australia, Ferdinand Mueller continues to display the same 

 extraordinary zeal and activity. The fifth volume of his ' Frag- 

 menta Phytographise Australise' is nearly complete, in which, 

 with his usual accuracy of detail, he continues to describe the 

 novelties he receives, establish and reduce genera, and consolidate 

 species with increasing boldness. He has also published a general 

 sketch of the vegetation of the Chatham Islands, and a volume 

 of "Lithograms" or plates, intended for the continuation of his 

 elaborate Flora of Victoria, which I sincerely hope he will now 

 resume. To Dr. Hooker we owe the first part (completing 

 Phenogamous plants) of an excellent 'Manual of the New Zealand 

 Flora,' reducing to the convenient octavo form the elaborate and 

 more expensive work he had previously published, and embodying 

 the large mass of new discoveries since received. The second part, 

 comprising Cryptogamic plants, is in the press. The very rich 

 collections received at Paris from their new possessions in New 

 Caledonia, comprising much that is new and of high interest, are 

 being gradually made known, in a series of papers by Brongniart 

 and Grris, in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles and the Bul- 

 letin de la Societe Botanique de France. And Seemann has pub- 

 lished three parts of his ' Flora Vitiensis ' or Flora of the Fiji 

 Islands, in quarto, with excellent illustrations by Fitch, bringing 

 the work down to Umbelliferse. 



In ISTorth America, none of the great works, neither the Botany 

 of the American Exploring Expedition nor the general Flora of 

 North America, have yet been resumed ; but a few botanists are 

 actively at work, and amongst them none more so than Asa 

 Grray, whose well-known accuracy of detail, connected with great 

 correctness of general vicAvs, a thorough knowledge of general 

 botany in all its branches, and a philosophical mind, has given 

 him so high a rank among the votaries of the science, and imparts 

 so much value even to detached papers proceeding from his pen. 

 Among those. which have recently appeared, chiefly in the Pro- 



