449 
of Edinburgh, Session 1870-71. 
Organon of Aristotle — the part earlier and the part later known ; 
and that the meaning of the terms did not vary with the significa- 
tions of Antiqui and Moderni. 
The point discussed in this note is of small importance on its 
own account, but it is one step, and a rather significant one, in the 
argument which tends to show that the new life in scholasticism 
which expressed itself most fully in the 14th century in William 
of Occam, and which afterwards developed, through the early 
natural philosophers of Italy, into those scientific methods which 
have rendered modern science possible, was due to the inborn 
genius of western Europe, and was not a foreign growth cut from 
the Greek stock and engrafted on the Latin. 
3. On some Abnormal Cones of Finns Pinaster. By 
Professor Alexander Dickson. 
In their celebrated essay, iC Sur la disposition des feuilles curvi- 
seriees,” * the brothers Bravais describe a cone of Finns Pinaster 
{Pin maritime ), where the lower part of the cone exhibited second- 
1 2 3 5 g 
ary spirals 7 S, 12 D (series - , - , - , — , — , &c.), while towards 
A o 7 1 A 
the apex the arrangement, in consequence of the disappear- 
ance of one of the spirals by 12, changed to 7 S, 11 D (series 
112 3 5 
r, -r , —r , -q , &c.).f They describe another cone of the same 
o 4 7 11 lo 
species, in which the lower four- fifths exhibited secondary spirals 
9 S, 13 D (series 1 , | , , &c.), changing at the upper fifth 
4 y lo AA 
112 
to 8 S, 13 D (ordinary series - , - , &c.) by suppression of one 
2 o o 
of the spirals by 9.J Such cases, along with some others chiefly 
in the capitula of Dipsacus sylvestris , lead these authors into a dis- 
cussion of the general question of the possible transition from one 
arrangement to another by change in the number of secondary 
spirals. As regards their “ curviserial ” forms, however, they are 
disposed only to admit the occurrence of such transitions by way of 
* Ann. des Sc. Nat. 2d ser. t. vii. f L. c. p. 93. 
t L. c. p. 103. 
