64 
expressed regarding the autonomy of lichens are those held by 
Nylander and the older school of lichenologists, and do not agree 
with beliefs most widely accepted to-day. 
F. LE Roy SARGENT. 
Botanical Federation in the West Indies. D. Morris (Nature, 
XXXV., pp. 248-250). This very interesting account of the efforts 
which have been made by several of the islands of the West In- 
dies, notably Jamaica and Trinidad, to establish experimental 
gardens for the culture of various plants of botanical and econom- 
ical value, is by the former director of the botanic gardens at 
Jamaica. Much encouragement and assistance has been given by 
‘Kew Gardens, and the movement has received a new impetus by 
the appointment of William Fawcett as Director of the Botanical 
Department of Jamaica, and of the transfer of John H. Hart to 
the Botanic Garden of Trinidad. Reports on the forests of Ja- 
maica and St. Vincent have been published, and are valuable 
additions to the knowledge of West Indian timbers. 
The Potato Tercentenary. (Garden, xxx., pp. 535-536. 
Nature, xxxv., pp. 175-176.) “The exhibition was held Decem- 
ber 2d—-6th, 1886, William Carruthers presiding. 
Mr. J. G. Baker, of Kew Gardens, contributed an interesting 
paper on “The Wild Species of the Potato as at Present Recog- 
nized.” He stated that there are five distinct species of tuber- 
bearing Solanums, all natives of America, and expressed the 
wish that some one would undertake to monograph the tuberous 
Solanums in the same way that the genus Crocus has recently 
been monographed by Mr. George Maw. 
Mr. Clements B. Markham contributed a valuable paper on 
“The Cultivation of the Potato by the Incas of Peru and other 
Andean Nations.” It is impossible to do justice to the paper in a 
short abstract; but he stated that the original home of the Potato 
was the Cordilleras of the Andes, where it has been cultivated 
from time immemorial over an area of 3,000 square miles 
throughout the empire of the Incas of Peru and in Chili. 
Vocabularies reveal the fact that the ancient people of whee 
cultivated it, and had produced several varieties. 
Mr. George Murray, of the British Museum, read a paper on 
