PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.
Linnean Society of London.
November 7, 1878,-Professor G.J. Allman, F.R.S., President, in the chair.
At this the first meeting of the session, the following gentlemen were elected Fellows of the Society :-The Rev. W. W. Fowler, Repton, Burton- on-Trent ; Wilfred Huddleston, Esq., 23, Cheyne Walk, S.W.; and Thomas Moss Shuttleworth, Esq., Howick, Preston, Lancashire.
Dr. F. Buchanan White read " Descriptions of new Hemiptera." The specimens on which his communication was founded were chiefly obtained by Prof. J. W. H. Trail during his explorations on the Amazon. Dr White defined two new genera (Helenus and Neovelia), and gave the diagnosis with remarks, of seventeen new species: these are Paryphes pontifex, fiibrenus guttahis, Largus lentus, Ischorovemus inambitiosus, Pamera pagana, Lethacus lepidus, Helenus hesi/onnis, Acanthocheila abducta, Hydrometra metator, Telia vivida, V. virgata, Neovelia Traiiii, Microglia mvnuta, Bydrobates regulus, Limnogonus lotus, L. lubricus, and Pelocoris procurrens.
Sir J.D. Hooker presented to the Society, in the name of a committee of gentlemen, a large oil painting of the Rev. M.A. Berkeley, the distinguished fungologist, painted by Mr. I.T. Peale.
Although the papers read at this meeting were chiefly on botanical subjects, some of these are of sufficient interest to zoologists to be men- tioned here; —
Dr. Maxwell Masters read an extract from a letter of Dr Beccari describing a gigantic Aroid found by him in Sumatra. Its tuber is five feet round, and the blade of the petiole is said to cover an area of fifteen metres, or forty -five feet.
In a paper on the Euphorbias, Mr. George Bentham made some per- tinent remarks on the subject of nomenclature. Regretting the increasing confusion in synonomy, he observed, >> Besides the young liberal-minded botanists who scorn to submit to any rules but their own, there are others who differ materially in their interpretation of some of the laws, or who do not perceive that in following too strictly their letter instead of their spirit they are only adding needlessly to the general disorder. In the application as well as in the interpretation of these rules, they do not sufficiently bear in mind the general principles -first, that the object of the Linnean nomenclature is the ready identification of species, genera, or other groups
