Scientific Serials

Abstract

THE Journal of Botany for April commences with two useful papers on Cornish botany: Supplementary Contributions to the Flora of North Cornwall, a very little known district, by Mr. J. G. Baker, and another by Mr. T. Archer Briggs.—Mr. F. E. Kitchener contributes a very interesting no.e on Cross-fertilisation, as aided by sensitive motion, in Musk and Achimenes, the former from observations of his own, the latter from those of Miss Dowson. The structure and motion of the sexual organs, which have long been known in both these flowers, are clearly shown to be contrivances for ensuring cross-fertilisation by insect-agency.—Dr. M'Nah, in a short paper, suggests this employment of the term “pseudocarp,” to distinguish fruit-like structures from true fruits, such, for instance, as the apple, the strawberry, the rose-hip, the mulberry, and the fig, into the composition of which other organs besides the true fruit enter. Among the short notes, the most interesting is one of the discovery of Echium plantagineum in Cornwall, by M. Ralfs, the plant having been hitherto confined, as far as British botany is concerned, to the Channel Islands. There is a coloured illustration of four new Hymenomycerous fungi, by Mr. W. G. Smith.