Abstract
LONDON. Linnean Society, November 15.—Mr. C. B. Clarke, Vice-President, in the chair.—Mr. W. B. Hemsley, F.R.S., F.L.S., exhibited a number of specimens and drawings of Fitchia (Hook. f. in Lond. Journ. Bot. iv. p. 640, pls. 23, 24), including a new species from the island of Raratonga in the Cook Archipelago, discovered by Mr. T. F. Cheeseman. The genus was described from specimens thought to have been procured on Elizabeth Island, a remote coral island in the Eastern Pacific; but Mr. Hemsley gave reasons for believing that the locality of the plant described by Sir Joseph Hooker was Tubnai Island in the same latitude, but 20° further to the west: an island of volcanic origin and mountainous, and, therefore, more likely than a coral island to be the habitat of such a plant, especially as it was originally discovered by Banks and Solander in Tahiti. Only three or four species are known: they are small resiniferous shrubs of tree-like habit, with rather thick branches, opposite simple leaves borne on slender stalks, and terminal, usually solitary flower-heads. Mr. Hemsley next exhibited an abnormal cluster of fruits of the edible chestnut found by Mr. Charles Read of Sway in the New Forest, and forwarded to Kew by the Rev. J. E. Kelsall. Usually there are two or three, rarely four in a cluster; but in the specimen: exhibited there were at least fifteen, the largest nuts measuring, about an inch in their greatest diameter. He also exhibited a curious flask-shaped bird's nest, which had been sent to Kew by Mr. J. H. Hart, Director of the Botanic Garden, Trinidad, but without any information concerning the bird which built it. It was constructed almost entirely of the soft plumose seeds of a species of Tillandsia (Bromeliaceæ). It measured a foot in length and between four and five inches in its greatest diameter, and had the entrance at the base, the receptacle for the eggs being near the top of the inside. Mr. J. E. Harting, in reply to a question from the chairman, said that without seeing a specimen of the bird which had built the nest in question, it was not easy to name the species with certainty; but that it was doubtless the nest of an Icterus, and probably of Icterus leucopteryx, commonly known in the West Indies as the Banana-bird.—Mr. James Groves, on behalf of Mr. Cecil R. P. Andrews, exhibited specimens of a Sea Lavender new to the Channel Islands, Statice lychnidifolia, Girard, discovered by Mr. Andrews in August of the present year growing sparingly on low rocks by the sea in Alderney in company with S. occidentalis, the most nearly allied British species. Mr. Groves pointed out that the interest of the record consisted, not so much in the fact of the plant occurring in Alderney (being a native of the adjacent French coast, and the Channel Islands being geographically more French than British), as in the fact that a species should be added to the flora of one of our possessions so near home.—Mr. W. C. Worsdell read a paper entitled “Further Observations on the Cycadaceæ,” intended to throw additional light on the problem as to the phylogenetic origin and relationships of this group of plants.—On behalf of Miss Alice L. Embleton a paper was read by Prof. G. B. Howes on a new entozoic Copepod (Goidelia echiura) found together with an Infusorian (Trichodina) in the rectum of a new Japanese marine Worm (Echiurus unicinctus) recently described by her in the Society's Transactions. This Copepod is eyeless, and a description was given of its appendages in both the adult and metamorphic stages, from careful dissections under the microscope made in one of the laboratories of the Royal College of Science.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 63, 169–172 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/063169c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063169c0