COMMITTEE'S ADDRESS. 163 
and conducted by him to Hawthorn Tower, his country residence, 
where upwards of forty members sat down toa “ déjetiner a la 
fourchette,” bountifully provided with all that hospitality could 
suggest. 
This dispatched, the President read a paper by Mr. Tuffen 
West, F.L.8., “ On the Seeds of Plants as objects for the Micro- 
scope,” and as this will not appear in our ‘“ Transactions,” since 
it treats of matters of general, and not purely local interest, a 
short epitome of it may be introduced here. 
“¢ The structure of the seeds of plants,” says Mr. West, “ fins 
engaged much of the attention of scientific botanists, and by 
these its great importance is well understood, but to the micro- 
scopist who uses his instrument to expose the beauties of creation 
in its minuter parts, seeds are a complete ‘ terra incognita,’ they 
are scarcely known to the professional mounter of objects, and 
even in works devoted to the microscope, they are passed over 
with a brief list of such as are pretty when viewed with low 
powers, but little more is to be found respecting them. The 
cause of this neglect seems incomprehensible, for an inexhaustible 
variety of beautiful objects is readily to be obtained. The colour- 
ing of the seed vessels is often rich, and in the mechanical pro- 
visions for the protection of the young germ, for facilitating its 
transport to various localities, and for allowing a thick flinty coated 
seed the access of moisture, is a field of research full of attractive 
details. . . . . . Theseed, or young germ, is protected 
by several seed coats, (testa) generally three, and the best way 
to examine these, is to try and obtain portions of each coat 
separately, and then by a very thin transverse section to get, as 
in a mass of strata, their relative order of superposition, the 
thickness of each stratum, and the number of layers entering 
into its composition. Sections may easily be made witha sharp 
razor, small seeds being fixed in a slit cork, or—slightly moisten - 
ing it first, to prevent their sticking to it—in bees-wax melted 
on the top ofa cork. Seed-coats are best obtained by tearing with 
a needle, on a slide, or boiling for a short time in a test tube in 
water, acidulated with nitric acid; but some are as hard as flints, 
and require grinding like teeth and bones.” Mr. West then 
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