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60 BOTANICAL NEWS.
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Red Pine is by no means inferior, if not much prettier, than the Austrian.
We hope to see them some day generally grown. MeehatCs Gardeners'
Montlily {PJdladelpJiia)
Oblique Leaves.— In the volume of the Proceedings of the Boston Society
of Natural History jvist published. Dr. Wilder shows that in the Elm the
larger portion is in the upper or most elevated side,—the leaves not lying with
their edges horizontally,— in the Hornbeam the outer or lower portion is the
largest. De Candolle and Herbert Spencer have both tried to account for obliquity
in leaves, but Dr. Wilder showed their reasoning insufficient. Dr. W.
believed it to be caused by no external agency, but by an inherent constitu-
tional force. Professor Agassiz remarked that German Botanists, especially
Schimper and Braun, had long since investigated the development of leaves in
connection with the general subject of phyllotaxis. They had found that each
leaf was primarily a swelling or wave of growth, freeing itself from the axis of
the embryo ; and that differences in size between the sides of a leaf were
caused by the greater force of the wave in its upward or downward descent.
Such peculiarities as liave been pointed out betvreen the leaves of the Elm and
Hop Hornbeam existed therefore in the earliest formation of the leaf, while
yet connected with the axis by a broad base, and before any construction for
the petiole had taken place. Professor Agassiz thought the word ' antistrophe'
better expressed the inverse relation of corresponding parts on the opposite
sides of a line than ' symmetry.' Dr. Wilder had shown that the correspond-
ing leaves on each side of a shoot were symmetrical.
BOTANICAL NEWS.
Ihid.
At a recent meeting of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, T. J. Bennett,
Esq., F.R.S., of the Brilisli Museum, was elected one of its six British Honorary
Fellows, and Professor W. P. Schimper, of Strasbourg, one of its Foreign
Honorai'v Members.
The chair of botany in Trinity College, Dublin, vacant by the appointment
of Professor Dickson to the similar chair in the University of Glasgow, has
been bestowed on Dr. E. Perceval Wright by the Provost and Fellows of the
College. Dr. Wright has for some years occupied the chair of zoology in the
same college, and is favourably known by his researches in the animal kingdom.
During the last illness of Professor Harvey, Dr. Wright discharged for him
the duties of his cliair. Hp has also written several memoii's on botaiiical
subjects, and among the collections made by him during his recent visit to
Seychelles were several interesting new plants, which he has described in the
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy.
Dr. T. C. Wyville Thomson, Professor of Natural History in Queen's College,
Belfast, whose numerous memoirs on zoological subjects have made him ex-
tensively known among naturalists, has been appointed to the chair of botany
in the College of Science at Ptephcn's Green, which was held along with the
professorship in Trinity College by Dr. Dickson.