plenium richardi, ferns which always seem to me to be the same plant merely changed in its habit, according as it grows pendent on a tree-trunk or erect in rocky soil. The specimens sent me by Mr. Laurenson, however, are very much broader in their pinnæ than any which I ever saw before, being in one case fully 1 in. wide, and actually overlapping each other considerably. They were gathered at unspecified places near Wellington. Another is clearly Aspidium capense, but the frond, which is about 10 in. long, is long-lanceolate in form, instead of the usual deltoid or rhomboidal one. Mr. Laurenson also informs me that he has gathered Asplenium lyallii at Evans Bay, where I and the Rev. A. Stock and Mr. F. Logan obtained it many years ago, showing that it still holds its ground there. He also mentions having found the proliferous form of Asplenium flaccidum near Otaihanga, which occurs also at Waitotara, and which clearly connects A. flaccidum with A. bulbiferum.

Art. L.—On the Freezing of New Zealand Alpine Plants: Notes of an Experiment conducted in the Freezing-chamber, Lyttelton. By L. Cockayne. [Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 3rd November, 1897.] Towards the close of last year (1896) Dr. Pairman, of Lyttelton, most kindly undertook to procure for me the use of the Lyttelton Harbour Board's freezing-chamber, so that I might make some investigations into the effect of more or less continuous cold upon New Zealand alpine plants, and so, in the first place, add possibly some facts of importance to our scanty knowledge of the physiology of New Zealand alpines, and, in the second place, furnish some information which might be of commercial value. With regard to this latter I may quote one instance: It is customary in Europe generally, and to a very large extent in Great Britain, to cultivate certain bulbous plants in spring for the sake of their flowers, such plants after flowering being usually destroyed. This has led to an enormous industry in Holland, Southern France, and Italy, also to one of very considerable extent in California and Japan. In New Zealand a similar trade could be developed with regard to our splendid flowering-plant Ranunculus lyallii, Hook. f. Rhizomes of this