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BOTANICAL GAZETTE 



he showed that in certain monocotyledons the growing point of the 

 embryo is terminal, as in dicotyledons. 



In addition to the flowering plants, his systematic researches extended 

 to every class of cryptogams. One of his most remarkable works in this 

 field is his monograph of the Acetabulariaceae, a family of calcareous 

 algae with an ancient fossil history. This was published in 1895 in the 

 Transactions of the Linnean Society, and was his only paper written in 

 English. His book on the Principles of Plant Geography (1905) treats 

 in an original manner of the leading conceptions in this great subject. 



Perhaps the most important of all his work was that on fossil botany. 

 His Einleitung in die Palaophytologie, published in 1887 and translated 

 for the Oxford Press in 1892, was of the utmost importance in bringing 

 home to botanists the value and significance of the geological record as 

 affecting plants. Among his special papers may be mentioned his 

 brilliant work on the Isle of Wight fossil Bennettites Gibsonianus (1890; 

 translated 1 891), the type of the mesozoic cycadophy tes ; on the Cyca- 

 dofilices Protopitys, Medullosa, etc. ; on plants of the Devonian and Lower 

 Carboniferous of Germany; and on Psaronius. In a quite recent 

 paper on the last-mentioned group he elucidated, for the first time, the 

 true nature of the root zone. The remarkable recent progress of paleo- 

 botany is in a great degree due to his researches. 



Count Solms became a foreign member of the Linnean Society in 

 1S87, of the Royal Society in 1902, and of the Geological Society in 

 1906. He received the gold medal of the Linnean Society in 19 n, and 

 was made a Sc.D of the University of Cambridge at the Darwin Cele- 

 bration in 1909. He was a striking and original personality, of rare 

 intellectual power, and a born leader of men.— D. H. Scott, Royal 

 College of Science, London. 



