Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/110

 96 BOTANICAL NE^S.

ceutists. The arrnngement of the material seems to be not bnsed on any evident system, which renders the l)ook somewhat difficult of consultation; but it would be ungracious to complain of this, since the editor, Mr. J. C. Brough, is stilted in the Preface to have been seriously ill during the pro- gress of the book through the pi ess.

Our obituary this month is unhappily a long one. Dr. F. A. W. Miquel, Professor of Botany in the University of Utrecht, and Curator of the Royal Herbarium at Levden, succumbed to an affection of the chest in the end of last January. He ranked among the most distinguished botanists of Europe, and the great advantages of the Leyden Herbarium were turned to excellent account by him in the elucidation of the botany of the East Indian Islands, Japan, and New Holland. The ' Annales Musei Botanici Lugduno-Batavi,' commenced in lS'i3,and published in folio parts, of which forty, forming lour volumes, have appeared, and the ' Flora Indiae BataviB ' are his most important works; but Professor Miquel was the author of Monographs of the Pipcracn-e, Ctjcadets, Ficus, Cacti, Cos/ia- rina, etc., and of very numerous papers in the transactions of the learned societies of the Continent, no less than lOS articles standing under his name in the Royal Society's Catalogue. By his death science loses an eminent votary, and the botanists of this and other lauds a fellow-worker who was always ready to place the information wdiich he possessed at their service.

])r. P'ranz Lagger, of Freiburg, who paid much attention to the flora of Switzerland, and added a i'tw species to it, died in the early part of the year.

Eugene Coemans died at Ghent in January last. He was a lay abbot, but devoted himself to botanical studies. His earliest memoir was on some critical Belgian Cryptogams, published in 1858; and for several years he directed his attention to these plants, especially to the Fungi, and published several systematic and structural pipers on that Order. More recently he became engrossed with the elucidation of the fossil plants of Belgium, and contributed several valuable papers to difl'erent periodicals, besides accumulating an extensive series of notes and draw- ings for a general work on the subject. These he has left to the Natural History jMuscum of Belgium. The most important of his papers is the description of a singular gymnospermous flora of Oetaceous age at Hainault, which was noticed in this Journal (Vol. V. p. 182). His memoirs on the genera Sp/ienop//i/llnm, Jininhiri/i, and Aderopltyllites, cleared up the confusion into which these forms of foliage had got; and, although at flrst he hehl them to be most probably phanerogamous plants, he subsequently adopted the views of Air. Carruthers, and in our pages published (Vol. VII. p. 337) his estimate of the classification and rela- tion of those forms. His death is a great loss to science, especially to science in Belgium.

We also regret to record the death, in his forty-second year, of Mr. T. W. Gissing, which took place at Wakefield ou December 28. Mr. Gissing was the author of a 'Flora of Wakefield' (noticed in Vol. V. p. 346), and has also contributed to our pages.

Communications have been received from: — Prof. Thiselton Dyer, A. G. More, Eev. J. M. Crombie, Rev. W. A. Leiiihton, Prof. Church, A. W. Bennett, W. Carruthers, J. Sadler, C. Bailey, Miss Gifford, J. Britten, etc.

�� �