142 THE JOUENAL OF BOTANY 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society, on February 15th, Mr. 

 Eobert Harold Compton read a paper entitled " An Investigation 

 of the Seedling Structure in the Legiwii7ioscB," of which the follow- 

 ing is an abstract. The tree habit is held to be primitive in the 

 Leguminosce, the herbaceous habit derived : these characters are 

 correlated respectively with the production of large and small 

 seeds, and therefore of large and small seedlings. A stable type 

 of tetrarchy is correlated with large size of seedling and is there- 

 fore probably primitive. Keduction in the size of the seedling 

 brought about an unstable tetrarchy passing into triarchy and 

 diarchy in connection with the supplementary relation existing 

 between the inter-cotyledonary protoxylems and the first plumule 

 traces. Other types of symmetry are also derivable from tetrarchy. 

 The diameter of the axis is the most important factor in deter- 

 mining the level of transition : low transitions being characteristic 

 of massive, high transitions of slender hypocotyls. Since both 

 the type of symmetry and the level of transition are so clearly 

 related to the size of the seedling, it appears that, with certain 

 possible exceptions, these anatomical features are not likely to be 

 of more value in solving phytogenetic problems than the size- 

 characters themselves. 



Messrs. W. Heifer & Sons, of Cambridge, have in the press, 

 and will shortly publish, a Monograph on the British Violets by 

 Mrs. E. S. Gregory, the outcome of more than a quarter of a 

 century's special attention to the Nominium section of Viola. 

 The volume will be illustrated with both line and half-tone 

 blocks. 



The seventieth birthday of Professor Warming, who has 

 retired from the Botanic Garden at Copenhagen, has been cele- 

 brated by the production of a handsome volume entitled Biologiske 

 Arbejden, which contains a series of memoirs by his friends. 

 French, German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish botanists have con- 

 tributed papers : of these four are in English — that by F. Borgesen 

 on the algal vegetation of the lagoons in the Danish West Indies ; 

 that by Carl Christen sen on a natural classification of Dryopteris ; 

 that by L. K. Eosenvinge on the hyaline unicellular hairs of the 

 Floride(B ; and that by 0. Paulsen on the plankton on a sub- 

 marine bank. 



The botanical article in the Journal of Genetics for February 

 is an interesting account by Mr. A. W. Hill of the history of 

 Primula ohconica Hance — published in this Journal for 1880, 

 p. 234 — under cultivation. The plant has already shown remark- 

 able variation in the colour and size of the flowers and in the 

 fimbriation of the corolla segments ; a double-flowered form and 

 hybrids with P. sinensis are also discussed. The paper is illus- 

 trated by two excellent coloured plates. 



A NEW edition, much enlarged, of Mr. G. Claridge Druce's 

 Flora of Oxfordshire will shortly be published by the Clarendon 

 Press. 



