taneously with, but perfectly distinct from, this series, M. Eulenstein intends also to publish another series, which will form, as it were, a standard collection of the various types of Diatomaceæ, and will contain typical representatives of nearly all the known genera, recent and fossil. The number of collections belonging to the first mentioned series will necessarily be extremely limited; but it is to be hoped that the Royal Microscopical Society will be the depository of one of them. Those of the second series would appear to be almost indispensable for all real students of the Diatomacea, and we can only wish that M. Eulenstein may find his praiseworthy labour properly appreciated.

A New Arrangement of Plants.-Mr. Benjamin Clarke, F.L.S., has at length brought out a large folio work on which he has been for some years engaged. He calls it 'The Natural System of Botany,' and it contains the results of a vast deal of labour and observation directed towards a new classification of Phanerogamous plants. The facts expressed in the various tables as regards the relative position of the ovule and its parts to the axis of the flower are no doubt valuable; and to aid him in working out this inquiry, Mr. Clarke received a grant of 107. from the Royal Society. It does not appear, however, that the classification proposed is in any way a natural one,-indeed, it cannot be expected that the consideration of one group of organs alone should furnish data for such a classification. Many botanists are already acquainted with some of Mr. Clarke's observations from his papers published in the 'Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,' in 1853, and in the Linnæan Society's transactions. The book is printed and published for the author, and, inasmuch as it is the work of many years of patient inquiry, he deserves the encouragement and support of his fellow-labourers.

New and Rare British Plants. Dr. Moore, at a recent meeting of the Natural History Society of Dublin, showed specimens of Eriophorum Alpinum, L., which had been found growing in considerable abundance on the north margin of Gurthavabra Lake, in county Cork, by H. J. Ryder, Esq. Hitherto this plant has only been known in the British Isles from Forfar and Sutherlandshire. It grows in Lapland and Norway on low bogs and marshes, and occurs also in North America. Mr. Stewart, of Belfast, has also discovered the sweet flag Acorus calamus, L., in the Lurgan canal, in the north of Ireland. This plant is met with in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, but was supposed not to have crossed the Irish Channel at all.

Potamogeton decipiens, Nolte, has been discovered at Bath by Mrs. Hopkins, and is figured in the March number of the Journal of Botany. It is quite new to the British flora, having as yet been gathered only in Northern Germany, in Holstein, Slesvig, and the vicinity of Hamburg. It is not included in French floras. The

plant comes very near to P. lucens, but in that species the leaves are not so much rounded at each end, are slightly stalked, and the border is thickened and minutely denticulate. The stipule is winged on the back on the lower part, and the peduncle is incrassated upwards. P. prælongus has leaves with a similar border to those of P. decipiens, but they are different in shape.

Utricularia neglecta, Lehm., has lately been ascertained as a British plant from a specimen in the British Museum, collected by the late Edward Forster, in a gravel-pit in Hainhault Forest, Essex. Professor Babington has noticed this species in all the editions of his manual, as likely to be found native in Britain, and his expectations are thus realized.

FRANCE.-Another Botanical Congress.-We understand that the Botanical Society of France have arranged to hold an International Botanical Congress in Paris, during the time of the Exhibition, to which botanists of all countries will be invited. The Congress will open on the 26th July, and will last for a month. Meetings will be held every Friday evening at the Society's Rooms, 84, Rue Grenelle St. Germain. On other days during the period, visits will be made to the Exhibition, to the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, to private collections, and excursions will be made in the neighbourhood of Paris, especially towards the end of August.

Vitality of Seeds.-M. Pouchet, of Rouen, the well-known advocate of the cause of spontaneous generation, has observed that a small proportion of the seeds of Medicago Americana are able to withstand an uninterrupted boiling for four hours without losing their vitality. In the greater proportion of the seeds thus treated the contents had swollen and broken the integument, and the water necessarily became mucilaginous, but others successfully withstood the high temperature, the outer integument resisting the water, so that when they were sown, they sprang up in the course of from ten to twenty days.

The Histology of the Dilleniacex.-M. Baillon contributes a careful account of the microscopic structure of various plants of this order to the 'Comptes Rendus.' His object is to show the close relation existing between the Dilleniacea and the Magnoliaceæ, and in particular the striking affinities with Magnoliacea which the Illicea presents. The Dilleniaceae are enormously rich in bundles of raphides; and in the pith of Dillenia speciosa these crystalline needles are exceedingly abundant. The wood of Dilleniacea exhibits at a certain age very remarkable fibres, with areolar punctations. They do not occur in young branches, and their gradual development presents many points of interest. The dried leaves

of most Dilleniaceae are rough to the touch, and in tropical America are used for the purpose of polishing. This property is due to the accumulation in the leaves of a very large number of

concretions of a definite form, and of siliceous composition, which are insoluble in acids, excepting hydrofluoric. M. Baillon describes them minutely in Curatella Americana, a species which presents these siliceous accumulations on both sides of its leaves.

GERMANY. On the Fecundation of the Fungi.-Professor H. Karsten has published a very valuable memoir on this subject in the 'Botanische Untersuchungen,' 1866. He had observed the fruit of a Lichen, the apothecium of Canogonium, with all its spore-sacs and paraphyses, forming an hymeneal stratum, develop itself from a single cell, equivalent to a gonidial cell, and, indeed, after a previous coalescence, and apparently after the mingling of its contents with those of a branch of the cortical cells closely applied to its surface, which is furnished with porously thin spots.-The question immediately arose whether the fruit of the Discomycetes (which is in part constructed in the same way) as well as those of other allied tubular Fungi, and even those of the Hymenomycetes, were not produced in consequence of a similar process of copulation. The investigation of the development of the leafy cellular Cryptogams supports the supposition that this mode of development occurs also in the other composite fruits of the Lichens and Fungi. Professor Karsten in pursuing this question has dissected and observed the developmental history of the fruits of numerous Fungi (Agaricus, Peziza, Helvella), and records his observations in this paper. The following simple laws as to the multiplication of plants, results from the confirmation of his views:

1st. The typical form of every true species of plant is propagated and maintained by sexually produced germs.

2nd. Whilst the fecundated germ-cell is developed in the Phanerogamia into a single germ, which usually rests in its envelopes for a longer or shorter period, and in the vascular Cryptogamia into one which evolves itself at once, in the cellular Cryptogamia it is developed generally into a composite fruit containing numerous seeds.

On Rotation and Circulation in the Cells of Plants with reference to the question of Contractility.-Professor Reichert has recently published the results of his investigations on this most interesting series of phenomena. Considered together with the invaluable observations of Professor Max Schultze on the movements of the Diatomaceae and vegetable protoplasm, they afford a comprehensive view of the subject. Professor Reichert maintains that

1st. In all vegetable cells with rotating, circulating, or rotatocirculating currents, two parts are to be distinguished in the contents of the cellulose capsule, namely, the central "cell-juice" or "cell-fluid," situated in the axis, and the mantle-layer, diffused between this and the cellulose capsule.

2nd. The "cell-fluid" is motionless, colourless, and non-tenacious; the "mantle-layer" consists of-first, a fluid basis, the

"mantle-fluid;" secondly, the protoplasm of Hugo Mohl; and thirdly, dispersed chlorophyl corpuscles, other corpuscles, and the cell-nucleus, which is sometimes absent. The primordial utricle, if present, bounds this "mantle-layer," separating it from the cellulose capsule.

3rd. The movements in the cell result from the action of some cause or other on the fluid part of the mantle-layer, which in its movements carries the viscid "protoplasm" and the suspended particles with it. Molecular movements of minute corpuscles suspended in the "mantle-fluid" have other causes to account for them.

4th. The movements of the mantle-fluid may be recognized either by the movement of suspended granules or of separated fragments of the viscid part of the mantle-layer, as in Chara and Hydrocharis.

5th. Various modifications of the character of the movements and their direction arise from the action of the mantle-fluid on the viscid part of the mantle-layer; and by the adhesion of the viscid substance to the cellulose wall, the diversion of the current of the fluid," and production of the viscid matter into filaments. In all cases, however, examined by Professor Reichert, he is convinced that the proximate cause of the apparent movements is the motion of this mantle-fluid, which has been hitherto overlooked; the cause of the motion of the fluid itself he will not venture to suggest. His chief point deducible from these facts is, that the viscid material is not a contractile protoplasm, and is not the proximate cause of the movements. Professor Schultze discovered a moving band of "protoplasm" along the raphe of Diatoms flowing from the contents of the silicious valves, which he clearly showed caused their locomotion. Professor Reichert would regard this, according to his views above noted, merely as the viscid substance set in motion by a "mantle-fluid," and not as a self-contractile protoplasm.

SWITZERLAND.-The Nature of Anthers.-J. Müller, the elaborator of the Euphorbiacea for De Candolle's Prodromus,' has published three brief papers in the Mémoires de la Société de Phys. et d'Hist. Nat. de Genève,' upon points relative to the anther which fell under his observation in the progress of his work. The first is a case in which the anther had reverted to a leaf, giving evidence that this organ is homologous with a plane lamina, its margins or line of dehiscence answering to the margins of a leaf. The second is upon the trilocular anther of Pachystemon, neatly showing that this (and, by just analogy, the three-celled anther of Ayenia also) is not a combination, but answers to a single leaf. The third exhibits the double flexure in the bud of the apex of the filament in Cephalocroton, the anther remaining upright, as contrasted with the inverted anthers of Croton.

5. CHEMISTRY.

(Including the Proceedings of the Chemical Society.)

THE announcement we made in our last Chronicle of the discovery of a new metal, by MM. Meinecke and Rossler, was it seems premature. The mineral they analyzed was a specimen of phosphorite which contained a trace of copper, and the blue line they saw in the spectrum was given by this metal.

An easy and cheap mode of preparing oxygen on a large scale is a great desideratum. A method has recently* been published by Mallet, which deserves attention on this account. The inventor avails himself of the fact that cuprous chloride absorbs oxygen from the air to become converted into the oxychloride, which oxygen is driven off on the application of heat. To carry out his process the author mixes the cuprous chloride with sand or kaolin, and places it with a little water in a horizontal iron retort, where it is agitated while a current of air is made to pass. After an hour or two the formation of the oxychloride is complete; then heat is applied and the oxygen collected by suitable means. The oxychloride may afterwards be revived by a repetition of the previous treatment. kilogramme of the cuprous chloride, it is said, will give with each operation from 28 to 30 litres of oxygen. The loss of material is very slight, 100 grammes of the chloride only losing 9 grammes in the repeated revivifications necessary to furnish 36 litres of gas.

А

In a similar apparatus the same agent may be used to furnish chlorine. For this purpose, hydrochloric acid gas is made to traverse the retort, by which the cuprous is converted into cupric chloride. The latter, when heated to redness, gives off half its chlorine, leaving the lower chloride to be revived as before. author suggests this process as a means of utilizing the hydrochloric acid gas from soda furnaces.

The

Another process for obtaining oxygen is given by Winkler. Binoxide of manganese, when heated with sulphuric acid, yields oxygen; but the sulphate of manganese produced, forms a hard cake which is apt to cause the fracture of the retort. Winkler therefore suggests the use of bisulphate of soda in the place of sulphuric acid. A mixture of three parts of the dry bisulphate and one of manganese will answer well. The bisulphate readily fuses with the heat of a spirit-lamp, and remains liquid to the end of the operation, pure oxygen being quietly evolved.

Dragendorff furnishes us with a ready means of distinguishing * Comptes Rendus,' Feb. 4, 1867.