44 
Fremontia Californica. (The Garden, xxix., p. 8.) 
A colored plate is given of this showy Californian shrub, 
which is abundant in the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada. In 
England it is commonly grown against walls, and in such posi- 
tions flowers freely and ripens seeds. 
Fungi of the Pacific Coast. IV. H. W. Harisness. (Bull. 
Calif. Acad. Sci., i., pp. 256-271.) 
A further enumeration of Californian species, including list of 
forms new to science, described in Grevil/ea during the past year. 
Garden Lettuce—a Study of. E.L. Sturtevant. (Amer. Nat. 
XX+ pp: 230-233) 
At the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, in 1885, 
eighty-three varieties of lettuce were grown under nearly two 
hundred names. These present three distinct form-species—the 
lanceolate-leaved, the “ Cos,” and ‘‘ cabbage.” Mr. Sturtevant 
gives evidence which supports the hypothesis that these form- 
species have originated from wild forms which have been brought 
into cultivation in different regions, and hence have ‘different ori- 
gins. Lettuces are supposed to have been grown by the Per- 
sians some five hundred years before Christ, and to have been 
introduced into China between the years 600 and goo of our era ; 
they were mentioned by Chaucer in England in the fourteenth 
century, and reached America with Columbus. 
Hookera v. Brodiea. James Britten. (Journ. Bot., xxiv., pp. 
49-53.) 
It is shown that the first of these generic names must sup- 
plant the second for this beautiful liliaceous genus. Hookera 
was proposed by Salisbury (Parad. Lond, t. 98), more than a 
month before Smith’s paper establishing Brodiea was read 
(Trans. Linn. Soc., London, x., 2, t. 1). It was named for Wil- 
liam Hooker, the artist who planned and illustrated the “ Para- 
disus Londonensis.” Mr. Britten remarks that the plants placed 
under Brodiga by Mr. Sereno Watson in his Revision of the 
North American Liliacez, must take the generic name Hookera, 
but may retain their specific names. The orthography of Hookera 
is too close to Hookeria, a genus of mosses, but the former has 
again priority of publication, so that if either is to be rejected for 
this reason, it must be the brvological genus. 
