Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/35

 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 35

penctrntc the flower and creep amoiigst the coronal fringes, upon which the pollen falls, to reach a process placed down deep in the tube which secretes nectar copiously. Eelying upon the hypogynous insertion of the stamens in the typical geuen, he inclines to place the Order in the vici- nity of SaiuT/dace^ and Violacere, and to regard Modecca and Papa>/acere as an intermediate link connecting it with CitcurbitacecB. In treating the geographical distribution of the Order, he drew attention to the way in Avhicli the true Passion-flowers are concentrated in Brazil, with types mostly distinct in other parts of tropical America, and the remarkabh; way in which the single annual Granadilla, which the Jesuits named, and to which the legendary interest is attached, runs out some 20° to the north of the others, and yet can only be known from a common, variable Brazilian type by habit and duration. Tacsonia, as he restricts it, is confined to the west of the Andes, and, though it climbs in its native localities to great heights, seems always to need conservatory-heat in our gardens. There are a few true Passion-flowers in India, a small distinct group in Australia and Polynesia, and a single outlying species in Mada- gascar. In tropical Africa there are several curious, well-marked, small genera. It is now very ditficult to trace to their original homes several of the generally cultivated types, such as P. quadrangular is. which have established themselves in widely-distant countries. The memoir enume- rates and classifies all the known genera and species of the Order, but describes only the few species which the author has not already treated recently in his two monographs, still unprinted, in the ' Flora Brasiliensis ' of Von IMartius and Endlicher, and in the second volume of Oliver's ' Flora of Tropical Africa.'

Botanical Society of Edinbuiigh. — -Nov. lOik, 1870. — Sir Walter Elliot, President, in the chair. The President delivered an opening- address. In noticing the progress of botanical investigation during the year, he referred to the recent discoveries of the laws governing the ferti- lization of plants in the two great divisions of the vegetable kingdom. The observations of Darwin on the influence of the unequal lengths of stamens, and the agency of insects for the prevention of interbreeding among some kinds of flowering plants, have been followed by the discovery, in others, of the effects produced by the alternate arrival at maturitv of the stamens and pistils, — thus necessitating the conveyance of the pollen from one individual to a ditt'erent one, and so checking too close and inti- mate fertilization, in the non-flowering division lie referred to the investi- gations still zealously prosecuted, by means of the microscope, into the obscure subject of the fertilization of cryptogamous plants, and traced the progress of the recent discussions on the germ theory and the question of s)iontaneous generation. He then noticed the interest that has been taken in the examination of. the ])roperties of Fungi, and the exertions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club to discriminate between the poisonous and innocuous species, and noted the recently-published papers of Dr. Bull, of Hereford, Mr. Worthington Smith, Mr. Cooke, and others, on the subject. Amongst recently-published works on the general science, particular reference was made to the full and clear definition of characttrs in Dr. Hooker's ' Student's Flora of the British Islands,' and to the ample details of recent discoveries in the new edition of Part I. of Prof. Balfour's ' Class Book,' bringing down the progress of the science to the