78 
WAYSIDE NOTES. 
their respective latitudes are New Zealand in the south and 
Great Britain in the north. New Zealand has 120 species 
and Great Britain 40; but the south temperate zone is 
everywhere richer than the north, in virtue of its more 
abundant moisture. 
The whole of Europe contains only 60 species, and the 
whole of North America about 150. That Great Britain 
should have 40 shows therefore that for so small an area it is 
particularly rich. But then there is no other region in this 
latitude so warm and moist and hilly, and even within our 
narrow limits we see the influence of climate, for our damp 
and mountainous western coasts produce twice as many ferns 
as the dry flat eastern counties. 
As with most cryptogamous plants nearly every species 
has a wide area of distribution. The brake-fern is absolutely 
cosmopolitan, The pretty bladder-fern, Cystopteris fmyilis , is 
found in all temperate regions north and south, keeping to 
the high mountain tops within the tropics. Several of our 
British species besides the brake are found unaltered in New 
Zealand. Fifteen of our ferns are native also in the United 
States. One half of our 40 are found in the Himalaya 
Mountains, and the whole of them are European forms ; wc 
have not one which is exclusively British. 
Three noted Botanists have passed away during the past two 
months—Dickson, of Edinburgh ; Anton de Bary, of Strasburg; and 
Asa Gray, of Harvard. We hope next month to give some brief 
account of their work. 
The vacancy caused in the chair of “ Botany and Medicine,” at 
Edinburgh, by the death of Professor Dickson, has been filled by the 
election of Isaac Bayley Balfour, the Professor of Botany at Oxford. 
Professor Balfour’s election is one upon the advisability of which 
botanists were pretty unanimous. He is himself the most dis¬ 
tinguished botanist that Edinburgh has produced in recent times, and 
one of the ablest, if not the ablest, of the exponents of the new school 
of botany. His father, John Hutton Balfour, known far and wide as 
“ woody fibre,” preceded Professor Dickson in the same chair. At his 
resignation his son was candidate for the post, and it is currently 
reported that he only lost the succession by a single vote.' 
We regret to see that Dr. Lapworth has not been elected to the 
chair of Geology at Oxford, vacated by Professor Prestwicli. Professor 
Green, the successful candidate, is a distinguished member of the 
Geological Survey, and, with the Survey influence behind him, would 
probably have carried the election, even had he been a far less capable 
man than he is. Although the officials of the Survey have not 
scrupled to annex Dr. Lapworth’s Highland discoveries, it is doubtful 
whether they have forgiven him for making them. 
