125 



BOOK- NOTES, NEWS, dr. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on February 7th, the 

 Rev. John Gerard, S.J., brought forward " Some Observations of 

 Climbing Plants," illustrating his remarks by lantern-slides from 

 his own photographs from living plants and herbarium material. 

 He began by pointing out the two opposing methods of describing 

 spiral growth or torsion as viewed from the exterior or from the 

 interior of the spiral, the result being that the u dextrorse " of the 

 first is the " sinistrorse " of the second method. With or against 

 the sun, which applies to the northern hemisphere, is reversed in 

 the southern hemisphere, and for these reasons he preferred to use 

 the terms "clockwise" and "counter-clockwise" (shortened to 

 " counterwise ") ; the Honeysuckle (Lonicera Periclymeyutm) and 

 the Hop (Hamulus Lupulus) turning clockwise, and the Convolvulus 

 (Convolvulus arvensis) and the Scarlet Eunner Bean (Phaseolus vul- 

 garis) twining counterwise. He showed the result of some experi- 

 ments he had made by growing beans in opaque cylinders, to dis- 

 cover if possible whether the deviation of the twist w r ere innate, or 

 from the direction of the light, the conclusion being drawn that the 

 plant possessed an inclination resembling the instinct of animals, 

 of proceeding in a given direction, and resented any attempt to force 

 it otherwise. The author concluded with some observations on the 

 behaviour of tendrils, as those of Bryonia dioica, displaying one 

 specimen which had varied the torsion four times and showed ten 

 turns in one direction against seventeen in the contrary. Dr. Otto 

 Stapf then gave an abstract of his paper on u New Plants from 

 Malaya," giving the history of his new genus Ilallieraeantha, which 

 receives eight species from the genus Ptyssiglottis Hallier f., and 

 eleven others are added from the Kew collections ; they form a 

 rery homogeneous group, are eminently shade-loving plants, and 

 exhibit anisophylly in a very marked degree. The headquarters of 

 the genus are in Borneo. 



Dr. Schinz has begun to publish in the Bull. Herb. Boissier for 

 February a series of notes on the changes in the nomenclature of 

 Swiss plants rendered necessary by the Vienna Code. They seem 

 very carefully done, and we are glad to observe that the work of 

 Miller in his Gardeners' Dictionary is receiving due recognition. 

 Continental botanists hitherto have paid scant attention to the in- 

 v itions of our eighteenth century writers ; even in so exhaustive 

 a work as the Genera Siphonogamarum this neglect is noticeable — 

 Radiola, for example, is there attributed to Roth (1788), whereas it 

 Was established by Hill in 1756. In citing for Alnus rotundi folia 

 \* Miller Gard. Diet. ed. 7 (1759) n. 1," Dr. Schinz, however, falls 

 into a curious error : there is no such name in the work, which, 

 moreover, does not contain trivials, which were added only in the 

 eighth edition. A. rotundifolia appears in Stokes (Bot. Mat. Med. 

 iv. 369 (1812) ), and is of course antedated by A. glutinosa Gaertn. 

 (1791). 



\ 



