SIR JOHN LUBBOCK'S address to the British Association, and Mr. Francis Darwin's paper in the Linnean Transactions, on the hygrometric awns of the achenes of Erodium and other plants, fail to give the honour to the right man. Their references reach some thirteen years back; but if they will look further they will find the late discoveries (including those of Hildebrand and Zimmerman in Pringsheim's Jahrbucher) forestalled as to Erodium by nearly half a century. In the Magazine of Natural History for 1836 is a modest contribution of nearly two pages from Robert Mallet of Capell Street, Dublin, describing and figuring his observations on the achenial awns of Erodium moschatum and Pelargonium peltatum. He finds that the awns of Erodium possess “most wonderful hygrometric sensibility.” The five awns lie in grooves of the carpophore. He gives transverse views of the awns in various conditions of torsion, and of the carpophore (not as well executed as the similar ones of F. Darwin and Hildebrand). He states that aridity causes the awns to twist, and so to extricate themselves from their grooves, and at the same time downy filaments bristle forth from the awns, and the achenes detach themselves and fall to the ground. Here the awns still continue to twist and keep tumbling over, so as to recede from the parent plant. At last by twisting they become like balloons wafted about by every zephyr. But motive power has not ceased with the awn: the slighest hygrometric change produces motion either backwards or forwards in it; and the constant tendency of this motion is to screw the seed into the ground (Mr. Mallet's italics). Such is the shape and great sensibility of the awns, that they may be readily applied to form most delicate hygrometers, for which purpose he had used them. Nearly all of these observations have been rediscovered and confirmed and published in elaborate form by the eminent investigators of our own day.