NOTES AND COMMENT 



Professor Douglas H. Campbell has contributed to the Stanford 

 University Publications a paper on the Derivation of the Flora of 

 Hawaii. He alludes to the well-known strongly endemic character of 

 the Hawaiian flora and fauna and to the evidences for a prolonged 

 isolation of the islands from any of the continental masses. As a result 

 of his recent visits to Hawaii Professor Campbell has been able to in- 

 crease the known flora of hepatics by 33 per cent. Among these the 

 primitive thallose forms are the most strongly represented and all of the 

 species are of Polynesian affinity except two that are common to that 

 region and to North America. The evidence secured by Pilsbry in a 

 study of Hawaiian snails corroborates the botanical evidence that the 

 Hawaiian archipelago was formerly more extensive and connected more 

 closely with land masses to the southwest. The sharp isolation of the 

 islands appears to date from the early Tertiary and to have been coin- 

 cident with the uplifting of the great cordillera which skirts the Pacific 

 coast of North and South America. 



Dr. W. A. Murrill, of the New York Botanical Garden, has added to 

 his list of popular publications a small volume entitled The Natural 

 History of Staunton, Virginia. A diary of events in the plant and 

 animal world is given, together with lists of trees, shrubs and herbaceous 

 plants collected in that vicinity. 



Papers in the Geographical Review by Theodoor de Booy describe an 

 expedition from Lake Maracaibo to the Sierra Peri j a, on the frontier of 

 Venezuela and Colombia. Both in text and illustrations these papers 

 contain much of interest to the botanist, particularly in the descriptions 

 of the savannas which lie west of Lake Maracaibo. 



