236 standley: floras of new Mexico and Argentina 



The fact that the three living genera are extremely distinct 

 from one another, and are monotypic, indicates that they are 

 ancient forms, the group having apparently lost all tendency 

 to produce new species. The curiously restricted geological and 

 recent distribution of the whole series shows how little we know 

 of some types of life, which must have had a long evolutionary 

 history now hidden from us. 



I take this opportunity to note that the Arachnid family Holo- 

 tergidae Petrunkevitch, 3 which occurs at Mazon Creek, must be 

 called Curculioididae, as " Holotergidae" is not based on a gen- 

 eric name. 



BOTANY. — Comparative notes on the floras of New Mexico and 

 Argentina. Paul C. Standley, National Museum. 1 



That there exists a marked relationship between the flora of 

 the southwestern United States and that of central and southern 

 Argentina is a fact fairly well known to botanists. The close- 

 ness of this relationship is scarcely realized, perhaps, except by 

 one familiar with the flora of either region when he inspects a 

 collection of plants or goes over a list of species characteristic 

 of the corresponding area. About three years ago Mr. Walter 

 Fischer, at that time director of the Escuela Experimental de 

 Agricultura at Rio Negro, in the Department of Rio Negro, 

 southern Argentina, secured some three hundred numbers of 

 plants in that vicinity. His collections were studied and named 

 by Dr. Crist6bal M. Hicken, Professor of Botany in the Univer- 

 sity of Buenos Aires. Dr. Hicken has published recently 2 an 

 extended report upon these specimens. The collection, although 

 not a large one, is interesting to the student of the Argentine flora 

 because of the considerable number of new species and of species 

 previously unknown in Argentina which it contains. 



A set of Mr. Fischer's plants was received recently by the U. S. 

 National Museum. When the writer had occasion to inspect 

 the specimens, he was impressed at once by the strong resem- 



3 Trans. Connecticut Acad. Arts & Sciences, 18: 81. 1913. 



1 Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 



2 Physis,2: 1-18,101-122. 1915-16. 



