1889.] Address. 123 



graph of the Species of Ficus of the Indo-Malayan and Chinese countries,' 

 which forms the first volume of the new Annals of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden, Calcutta. It deals with the Synoecia, Sycidium, Covellia, Fusyce 

 and NeomorjjJie, and is fully illustrated with plates which have been 

 excellently lithographed by students of the Calcutta School of Art. 

 Dr. King proposes to issue a supplement dealing with the new species 

 recently collected by Mr. H. O. Forbes in New Guinea, and containing 

 an " account of the fertilisation of Ficus Roxbicrghii," by Dr. D. D. 

 Cunningham. A similar monograph of the genus Quercus, by the same 

 author, the commencement of which was noticed by my predecessor last 

 year, is rapidly approaching completion, and will probably be issued 

 during the current year. 



In the department of Physiological Botany several most interest- 

 ing memoirs have been published by Dr. D. D. Cunningham. The 

 chief of these gives an account of an elaborate series of researches 

 into the causes of the movement in the sensitive plant ; the result 

 amounting almost to a demonstration that these are to be found 

 rather in mechanical arrangements of the fluids in the tissues, than 

 in any vital or nervous force originating in the cell pi'otoplasm. 

 This research appeared in the volume of Scientific Memoirs by the 

 Medical officers of the Army of India which was issued by the Surgeon 

 General for the year just ended. In the same volume Dr. Cunningham 

 also describes a new genus of TJstilaginece and a curious Alga entophytic 

 in the leaves of the pretty floating water- weed so common in Bengal — ■ 

 Limnanthemum indicum, and Dr. James Tomes, gives an interesting 

 account of the way in which flies visiting the flowers of Wrightia 

 coccinea are entrapped and killed. 



The forthcoming number of the same publication contains two 

 botanical papers: — Dr. D. D. Cunningham gives a series of notes on the 

 life history of two species of Favenelia, a genus of the Uredinece, regard- 

 ing which very little was previously known beyond the mere morpho- 

 logical characters of certain of the reproductive elements. A paper, 

 by Dr. Barclay, is also occupied with details of the life-history of 

 another Uredine, a new species of Cceoma occurring in the Simla 

 Hills, on Smilax aspera, Linn., and characterised by the very peculiar 

 character of its secidial fructification and the abnormal form of germina- 

 tion of the teleutospores, the promycelia breaking up directly into 

 sporidia, in place of giving origin to the latter through the intervention 

 of sterigmata. 



Dr. Barclay has also contributed to our Journal a " Descriptive List 

 of the Uredinece occuring in the neighbourhood of Simla," illustrated 

 with plates. 



