PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 377 
menon is thought to owe its origin in part to the liability of the per- 
fect flowers to fail in their fertilisation, owing to stress of weather or 
absence of the fertilising insects. A self-fertilisable plant ma 
the cl 
season, from roperly expanding its flowers, but not have lost its capa- 
sie for self-fertilisation. Natural selection might then complete the 
ork, and cause strict cleistogamy. is chapter seems to be less 
= sano than the others, for not only does Mr. Darwin appear to 
u 
e 
essentially physiological, but he omits from the list of cleistogamous 
species all mention of the Vandee, which affords very striking instances 
when their high lg re apeoislisatacn is considered. He is 
owers are not ner ee n size, fo ave ourselves seen a piled 
—e from Trinidad in which the aesanghe was “He 
f Loerie, we would suggest that uld examine 
other . as Panicum and Rottbo eas i detection 
of Dicey Incidentally, too, we may mention that the 
plant on which Philippis genus Heterocarpe@a was founded is nothing 
more than a Cardamine (probably C. chenopoditfolia, St. Hil.), and that 
the strangeness of the pod of the cleistogamic flowers being a silicula 
is lessened by Dr. Hance’s discovery of a species growing in China 
(C. paradoza, ie in which this i is the ordinary form of fruit. 
i 
. 
Proceedings of Societies. 
Linnean Soctery—Wovember 1st, 1877.—Prof, Allman, F.R.S., 
President in the Chair. Messrs _ 8. M. Samuel and P. Wyatt Squire 
were elected Fellows. —The Rev. T. H. Sotheby of Langford, Bud- 
ville, Somerset, exhibited branches of a shrub, originally obtained by . 
him from Lady Rolles’s garden at Bicton. It was described and 
by Dr. Lindley in vol. 5 of the Journ. Hort. Soc., under the name of 
Colletia se and then stated to be a seedling raised from C. spi- 
nosa. It had, however, been described in the Botanical Misce‘lany by 
ir W. J. Hooker, twenty years before, under the name ef Colletia eru- 
ciata, from dried specimens collected by Dr. Gillies, near Maldonado, Rio 
Mr. Brown thinks it eps that this calyx-closed state has been taken for 
a cleistogamic one, and this probability is strengthened by the presence of five 
glands looking like aborted he between the calyx and the ovary. Is it 
not ib E 
to é m the cluiatogumic list, esi in so doing, to 
pclereunade ecektin ceo n. There is not the slightest 
fdoubs but that the genus is aie clei 
