1897] NOTES AND COMMENTS 30 



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and the country of which it is a native will help to crystallise 

 certain ideas about that group or order which have been vaguely 

 floating in the student's mind. A considerable sum of money must 

 be spent every year in providing the chrysanthemum shows which 

 are to be found in many of the parks each autumn. Some of the 

 chrysanthemums are beautiful, others very ugly ; but we are of 

 opinion that the money would be better spent in keeping a variety 

 of plants which need the shelter of a house all the year round. 

 Such as, for instance, a few temperate orchids, examples of in- 

 sectivorous plants and the like, which the ordinary student knows 

 only from pictures. The resolution now before the County Council 

 has reference probably to laying out beds to illustrate some of the 

 more important families. This might be done at very little expense, 

 and under proper management would be a great boon to the would- 

 be botanist. 



Botany of the Azores 



The Eighth Annual Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, issued 

 by Prof. Trelease, the director, has just reached us. It is prepared 

 in the same clear and elaborate style as its predecessors, and gives 

 an exhaustive account of the work, educational as well as horti- 

 cultural, achieved during the year. Excellent reproductions of 

 photographs taken in the gardens are again an interesting feature. 

 One gives us an idea of the destruction caused by the memorable 

 tornado of May 27, 1896, which worked such havoc in St Louis. 

 Though the grounds were not actually traversed by the cyclonic 

 funnel, the violence of the wind was such that a number of the 

 structures were either unroofed or totally wrecked, while some 

 450 trees, often of large size, where wholly or practically destroyed, 

 and many of those left standing were seriously broken. Six 

 days before the tornado " the most destructive hailstorm that has 

 ever been experienced at the garden," also caused great damage. 

 The scientific papers which occupy the greater part of the volume 

 are extra-American in interest, and embody the results of some 

 work by the director in the Azores. Mr J. Cardot supplies an 

 account of the mosses found on the nine islands. These (excluding 

 bog-mosses, of which there are eight) number eighty, fifty of which 

 occur also in Madeira and the Canaries, sixty-one in Europe, 

 especially the Mediterranean region, and in Algeria, and about forty 

 in North America. One found in Elores has been known hitherto 

 only from Madagascar and equally distant relationships are shown 

 in the distribution of the genus Sciaromium, which has three 

 species in the Azores, while nearly all its other representatives 

 are to be found in New Zealand and temperate South America. 

 Seven species are described for the first time. The fact that several 

 of the most important islands do not as yet muster together more 



