of Edinburgh, Session 1870-71. 
397 
matter, the present monstrous, pernicious, and perplexing practice 
of .reading Greek with Latin accentuation must cease. Independent 
of its absurdity, the loss of time occasioned by teaching one accent 
to the ear, and another to the understanding, should be motive 
enough for all teachers to deliver our classical schools from a yoke 
which, originally imposed by sheer laziness, is now supported only 
by ignorance, prejudice, and the tyranny of custom. 
Monday , 20 tli March 1871. 
D. MILNE HOME, LL.D., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
The following Communications were read :— 
1. Notice of Exhibition of Vegetable Spirals. By 
Professor Alexander Dickson. 
Dr Dickson exhibited a number of specimens, chiefly Fir Cones 
and Cacti, illustrating the principal series of vegetable spirals. 
Almost all the cacti and many of the cones were from the Edin¬ 
burgh Botanic Gfarden and the Museum of Economic Botany there. 
As the nomenclature of the cacti in the Edinburgh garden, as in 
many other botanic gardens, is in a state of considerable confusion, 
the specific names will not be referred to, and the generic ones, 
even, must in some cases be held as only approximately correct. 
This, however, is of the less consequence as the phyllotaxis of such 
plants is eminently variable even in the same species. Ten 
different series or systems of spirals were illustrated by specimens, 
of which the following may be noted. 
t n r ■ 1 1 2 3 5 . 
1. Ordinary series, -, ^, &c. 
Cones of Abies Douglasii (jy): A. excelsa (J^') '■ Pinus 
Coulteri : Araucaria excelsa Araucaria im- 
bricata (H) : Biju gates of the same series in cone of 
Abies Douglasii , the solitary abnormality out of 
3 H 
VOL. VII. 
