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BOTANICAL NEWS. ` 63 
of Edinburgh ' oomai Sir — Elliot's list of field clubs. This is 
confined to. societies in the vinces, and is arranged under the three 
logue won not profess to be complete, no less than 121 clubs are enume- 
ra particulars of their constitution, government and publications. 
Certainly there can be little doubt that, with so extensive à machinery, 
their investigations, and to render the work done more availa 
reissue is in course of preparation (to be published by ^ Quaritch 
monthly parts) of Lindley and Hutton’s‘ Fossil Flora of Great Britain,’ 
crigtaalty ‘published in 1837. This standard book has of late years rs be- 
come very scarce, and the descriptions are now much bi the time, 
though the plates retain their great scientific value. supplementary 
volume will be added, written by Mr. Carruthers, hich will contain a 
ind revision of the species in the original book, and figures and de- 
scriptions of all - imper additions to fossil botany made during the 
last thirty-five year 
t a recent meeting « of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticul- 
tural Society, a report on the growt th of twelve different species of pps 
under five different iania of manuring, as observed during 1870-71 
was presented by Dr. Masters. ‘This rt forms the complement to a 
ear’s trials. But this uncertainty applied von so much to the phy- 
siological and structural questions involved, as those connected with 
the vm constitution of the plants acted on 
Profess Thiselton Dyer has a paper in the * Quarterly Journal of Mi- 
AM ‘She ence’ on the structure of the stem of the Screw-pine (Pan- 
danus). The fibro-vascular bundles contain two large angular scalariform 
vessels, surrounded by wood and liber cells, and with a few spiral vessels 
on the inner side ; at regular intervals round the periphery of the bundles 
are strings of small parenchymatous cells, each containing a single oblong 
prismatic crystal. These do not occur. elsewhere in the tissues, but true 
raphides are plentiful in the general Pariya, especially near the 
rind. 
. A. Destruge writes from Ecuador (* Nature’ for Jan. 25th), on the 
subject of the Condurango of that country, a plant which has ke. pes 
greatly vauuted (as so many drugs have been before) as a medy for 
cancer, and already fetches a high price in the American inis. it is 
an Asclepiadeous ndr and, according to Mr. Destruge, forms the type 
of a new genus of the division Aste, hane. 
Our London soem are reminded that this evening (February e " 
the Linnean Society's Meeting, the President, Mr. Bentham, will re 
