LI-N?rEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XXXIX 



been previously published, a tborougli conviction of tbe para- 

 mount importance of organogenesis, and very peculiar views 

 of what is meant by method and how it should be carried 

 out. What Baillon had begun in EuphorbiacesB, and what 

 the younger Agardh had attempted in a general system, ap- 

 pears to have been followed out, under the same school, for the 

 benefit of the pupils at the Jardin de I'Ecole de Medecine at 

 Paris. In the table of the Natural Orders as there taught, and 

 given in the ' Adansonia,' we learn for instance that Polygoneae 

 are Chenopodese with solitary erect orthotropous ovules, that 

 Loranthacese are Polygoneae with the stamens opposite the 

 petals, and that JuglandesB are apetalous Loranthacese with di- 

 clinous flowers. It would logically follow that a Walnut is a 

 Goosefoot. It appears to me that it would give just as clear an 

 idea of aflinities if we were to say that an Oak is a Moss with a 

 woody stem and amentaceous flowers. As to the want of re- 

 search, we may quote the genus Mremopyxis of Baillon, which 

 had already been twice detached from BcecTcea by others — or 

 Marchand's long paper on the structure of the stem in Phanero- 

 gams, where we have only to contrast his single page of biblio- 

 graphy with the thirty-seven pages of Oliver's paper in the 

 Natural- History Eeview for July 1862, required for the enume- 

 ration of the works and papers published on the same subject. 

 • In Cryptogamic Botany, I need not to mention the numerous 

 publications on Ferns which the increasing taste for the cultiva- 

 tion of that beautiful tribe has extracted from scientific, semi- 

 scientific, or purely popular writers. But whilst we have reason 

 to congratulate ourselves that the late Sir William Hooker had 

 completed his great ' Species Pilicum,' we cannot but regret that 

 the condensed Synopsis, in which he embodied all recent dis- 

 coveries, and with which he had made great progress, should 

 have been cut short by his lamented decease, without being suf- 

 ficiently advanced to give us any hope of its completion by other 

 hands. 



In Mosses and Lichens, the recent contributions have been 

 chiefly detached papers on those of local districts, or of special 

 collections made by travellers, and inserted in a great variety oi 

 Journals and Transactions at home and abroad. On the general 

 subject I have only to mention Schimper's supplements to the 

 'Bryologia Europsea,' and a supplement by Nylander to his 

 ' Synopsis Lichenum.' 



With regard to Fungi, I was struck with the simultaneous 



