NOTES AND NEWS. 
Mr. O. T. Baron, whose collection of humming-birds has 
been placed in the museum of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, has 
again started for South America for the purpose of making col- 
lections of small birds, mammals, and insects. 
A new publication, Novitates Zoologice, is to appear from the 
museum of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, Tring, England, in 
January, 1894. It will be issued in parts at irregular intervals 
during the year, making an annual volume of 400 to 600 pages. 
Mrs. Katharine Brandegee, returning from Baja California, 
with the botanical and zoological collections made by Mr. Bran- 
degee and Dr. Hisen during the month of September, was ship- 
wrecked off the coast of California, near San Pedro, in a dense 
fog, on the night of October 14th. The collections escaped 
injury. 
In the course of a review of Index Kewensis by the editor of 
the London Journal of Botany, some remarks are made which 
may be of use in helping us to “ see ourselves as others see us.’’ 
‘‘ The aim is to record every genus and species of phanerogams 
published before the end of 1885-—a date which, fortunately for 
the compiler, precedes the eruption of neo-American nomen- 
clature, which is still raging almost unchecked.’’ ‘' His care 
throughout has been to avoid the necessity of causing himself to 
be cited as the authority for any combination of names; and in 
this he contrasts favorably with too many modern writers, espe- 
cially in America, whose often ill-considered resuscitation of dis- 
used names seems to have been actuated by a ‘ desire to obtain a 
cheap notoriety by making new combinations.’ Changes of 
nomenclature on a large scale should be left to the monographers 
of genera, and Mr. Jackson has acted with judgment as well as 
with modesty in not attempting them.’’ 
The genus Agoseris Raf. into which the species have all been 
transferred from Troximon both by Professor Greene and by 
Otto Kuntze, appears to have been taken up before. The Kew 
Index cites as synonyms of species of Troximon, 4. cuspidata 
