68 THE PLANT WORLD. 



the homely manuals of botany as products of a past era, and to re- 

 mand to the background all local floras; but the fact remains that a 

 knowledge of our native American plants is as indispensable to the 

 florist or amateur cultivator as to the professional systematist who 

 embarks on a study of the flora of other countries. 



.. . .NO TES A/ND N EV5. ... 



The Librarian of the U. S. Department of Agriculture has just 

 published a valuable list of publications relating to forestry now in the 

 Department Library. It embraces 1,098 volumes and pamphlets, and 

 nearly complete sets of 138 serial publications, and is believed to be 

 the largest and most representative collection in America. It is 

 further enriched by the addition of a very complete subject index. 



Recently a " Student's Handbook of Mushrooms of America" has 

 been published in Washington by Thomas Taylor, M. D. This has 

 been issued in five parts at fifty cents each, and contains additional 

 matter and plates supplementing the papers issued by the Department 

 of Agriculture under the title of "Food Products," of which 36,000 

 copies were distributed in 1894. Each part contains twenty-four pages 

 with plates, and gives a description of the structure and classification, 

 as well as recipes for cooking the edible species, and instructions how 

 to know the poisonous ones. — E. G. B. 



Mr. George J. Peirce, Assistant Professor of Plant Physiology, 

 Leland Stanford University, in an article published in the June num- 

 ber of the Botanical Gazette, gives the results of some observations 

 and experiments "On the Mode of Dissemination and on the Reticu- 

 lations of Ramalina reticulata." This lichen is very abundant on the 

 deciduous-leaved trees and shrubs about Stanford University and 

 attains a very large size, one fragment which was measured being 

 twenty-six inches long when dr}^ The lichen is characterized by its 

 netted structure and by its remarkable power of absorbing water, a 

 fragment which was wet weighing more than twice as much as the 

 same fragment when dry. This absorption of water renders the 

 lichen very soft, so that it is easily torn and carried by the wind. The 

 growth of the transplanted part does not seem to be at all interrupted. 

 The holes are found in greatest abundance near the tip, where 

 the tissue is softest and least coherent. The origin of the holes in 

 the thallus is ascribed to the unec[ual expansion of the thallus conse- 

 quent on its unequal wetting by drops of rain and to the curving and 

 folding over of the apex and the resulting strain on the weakest part 

 which is near the apex. — Claj-a E. Ciunniiiigs.^ Wcllesley College. 



