AUSTRALASIAN CHARACE^E* 123 



conceptacles or reproductive organs such as we find in seaweeds.'' 

 This will stir up those botanists who speculate about "fasergriib- 

 chen," and recent writers about "the ancestors of the Fucacea" 

 must take a back seat when they are taught to reflect "that the 

 delightful orange has had a Fucus for a remote ancestor." The fig 

 also comes from the same source, since "to the evolutionist no 

 better example of homology can be found than between the 

 receptacle of the fig and the conceptacle of the seaweed." This 

 was perhaps seen "in a glass darkly" by those botanists who called 

 the one Fucus and the other Ficus, as no doubt Dr. Bonavia would 

 promptly admit. If there be not much in a name, there must be 

 less in a mere letter ; and one cannot help pausing to wonder at 

 the narrow escape this view must have had from rushing on the 

 mind of Linnaeus, when in the Genera Plantarum he put Ficus last 

 of the Flowering Plants, on the very page opposite the Cryptogamia. 

 Speaking of Citrus, " In fine, I may here say that I have en- 

 deavoured to leave no opening for the reader, if he has had th< 

 patience to read through this discussion, to say that I have not 

 taken sufficient pains to identify and homologise this * blessed ' 

 orange-peel ! " The italics are those of the author, who has 

 certainly taken abundant pains, but the orange-peel remains a 

 slippery matter, and the Fucus too. 



S3o far as it can be gathered from this very remarkable pro- 

 duction, Dr. Bonavia's central idea is that botanists have been blind 

 to any view of the great unity of character in plants, — that the 

 tendency has been to fix gulls between the groups of plants rather 

 than to bridge them over, — and that conventional morphology has 

 a deal to answer for, as well as systematic botany. It may be that 

 every one of us tends to get obstinate and prejudiced and Philistinic, 

 and slow to recognise the need for revolutions. No one, we may be 

 sure, is content to think of plant morphology that "it is all werry 

 capital," as Mr. Weller put it on a memorable occasion; but even 

 the youngest and most transcendental botanist is scarcely prepared 

 to kick the whole thing over and start afresh in this fashion. 

 Dr. Bonavia is beyond the reach of our humble arguments, and, so 

 far as this Journal is concerned, he may draw a "bye." 



Enough has been said to show the daring character of Dr. 

 Bonavia's Philosophical Notes. There are some hard things quoted 

 here against critics from the pen of "an earnest man, Andrew 

 Lang." Without doubting the habitual earnestness of that dis- 

 tinguished writer, I wish to avoid the danger of meriting their 

 application. Q. M. 



Australasian Characem. Described and figured by Otto Nordstedt. 



Part I. Large 4to. Lund, 1891. 



The first part of this important work contains illustrations and 

 descriptions (in English) of nine species and one subspecies, three 

 of them, Nitelia partita, N. tumida, and Char a Leptopitys subspecies 

 subebracteata , being new, while several of the others had not pre- 

 viously been at all adequately described or figured. A plate is 

 devoted to each species, and the descriptions are also printed on 



