Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/213

BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 191 We are glad to welcome a botanical publication from Ireland, in the shape of Notes from the Botanical School of Trinity College, Dublin. This first number contains a very interesting account of the Herbarium of Trinity College, fi-om the pen of its Keeper, Prof. Perceval Wright, and two papers by Mr. H. H. Dixon, his assistant, on the chromosomes of Lilium longifiorum and the nuclei of the endosperm of Fritillaria imperialis — each illustrated by a plate. Perhaps we may, at some future date, publish some extracts from Prof. Perceval Wright's paper: meanwhile it is useful to have on permanent record this account of the Dublin Herbarium, which the present Keeper has done so much to render accessible. Marmaduke Alexander Lawson, Director of the Botanical De- partment, Ootacamund, died at Madras on Feb. 14th. He took his M.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1864, and was appoijited in 1868 to the Professorship of Botany at Oxford — a post which he re- tained until 1882, when he accepted the Indian appointment which he held until his death. He was at one time much interested in British plants, and contributed to this Journal a paper on the Flora of Skye {Journ. Bot. 1869, pp. 108-114) ; he also paid some atten- tion to Mosses, and enumerated (in Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinb. ix. 452) those collected by Kobert Brown (Campst.) in Greenland. He monographed the Combretacece and Myrtacece for the Flora of Tropical Africa (vol. ii. pp. 413-439 : 1871), and the Celastrinea, Rhamnea, and Ampelidem for the Flora of British India (vol. i. pp. 607-668 : 1875) ; but his systematic work can hardly be con- sidered as of the highest order. In 1882 he was chairman of the Department of Zoology and Botany at the Southampton Meeting of the British Association, and delivered an address on the progress of Systematic Botany. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1869. Since his departure to India, Lawson seems to have devoted himself exclusively to the duties of his office, and has not, so far as we are aware, contributed to botanical literature. This Bulletin de VHerbier Boissier for February contains a memoir and bibliography of Jean Miiller, best known to systematists by the abbreviation " Muell. Arg." — Argoviensis (from Aargau, the canton in which he was born) having been affixed to his name to distinguish him from the numerous other botanists bearing the same patronymic. He was born of poor parents at Teufenthal on May 9th, 1828, and, after many difficulties, succeeded in raising himself to a high position in the scientific world. Although of late years mainly occupied with lichens, he published important memoirs on phanerogams — notably on the Euphorbiacea in De Candolle's Prodromus, on Apocynece, Riibiace(B, &c. At the time of his death, which took place on Jan. 28th, Miiller was keeper of the Delessert herbarium and director of the botanic garden in Geneva, in which post he is succeeded by M. John Briquet, the author of this memoir. For a full account of the life and work of the deceased botanist we must refer our readers to the Bulletin, where will also be found an excellent portrait.