4l2 Reviews. [zor 
are seldom catalogued a perfectly appalling vista of changes and 
uncertainty is opened to the view. It is matter of minor 
importance, but still to be regretted that Mr. Sheldon should 
have been so singularly unfortunate in the selection of some of 
his names. 
The fifth paper is a list without notes, excepting of station, of 
fresh water Algze. The sixth discusses the alleged poisonous 
properties of certain Cypripediums, the author concluding from 
his own experience that C. sfecfadbz/e is in his case at least, a 
strong local irritant. 
Botany of the Death Valley Expedition By F. V. COVILLE 
(Contr. U. S. Nat. Mus. vol. iv). This is one of the most impor- 
tant, as well as the most voluminous contributions to the botany 
of the Southwest. The chapters on ‘‘Characteristics and 
Adaptations of the Desert Flora” are most interesting, so also 
are those on distribution in which however must be taken into 
account the necessarily far from exact information acquired by a 
single expedition, which will be sufficient reason for differences 
of opinion not only as to many of the details of distribution, but 
as to the value of some of the zonal plants selected. The sixty- 
six pages devoted to a list of the species by numbers and to a 
bibliography might have been omitted as the information con- 
tained was nearly all embodied in the main list occupying the 
previous pages. The whole number of species and varieties 
enumerated including algze and fungi is 1261 a considerable pro- 
portion of them belonging to the ‘' Greeneian’’ category, and 
‘as the author remarks ‘‘It should be understood that the desert 
region of California of which Death Valley forms a part, does not 
contain all these twelve hundred species. More than one-half of 
them were collected either in the Sierra Nevada and its southern 
continuations, or in the Tulare Plains, areas with vegetation 
almost wholly different from that of the desert region.’’ The - 
paper would indeed have been of quite as much value if the long 
catalogue of familiar plants found along the route especially in 
the valley of the San Joaquin had formed no part. It adds ver 
little more to our knowledge than would a similar list of the 
plants collected in an expedition from Boston to New York. 
