A NEW METHOD OF PRESSING PLANTS. 7/5 



Every part of the specimen is now held in place against the glass 

 by an elastic layer of dry, absorbent material which will, upon pres- 

 sure, rapidly extract the juices of the plant while holding it fully 

 extended. 



For pressing, the boards, with their superimposed burdens, are 

 piled one upon another, the topmost glass is covered with a board and 

 weights placed on top of all. There is no danger of breaking the 

 glass, since each piece is siipported by the board immediately above it. 

 If the driers, cotton and cloths are thoroughly dry to begin with, it is 

 usually unnecessary to change them. 



By this method any undesirable arrangement, such as interference 

 or folding of parts, is at once noticed and may be readily adjusted; 

 while by judicious bending, folding, and placing, truly artistic eifects 

 may be secured for permanent mounts. While not suited to rough 

 field-work or rapid treatment of plants in quantity, this method is un- 

 excelled for preparing the finest quality of museum and exhibition 

 specimens, and I earnestly commend it to the attention of every bot- 

 anist who wishes to display to the best advantage the scientific char- 

 acters of the species, and to the lover of beauty who seeks to retain 

 in the hortus siccus something of the grace and charm of the living 

 plants. 



Wellesley, Mass. 



The famous fossil skull from California, known as the Calaveras 

 skull, which has been supposed to prove the existence of man in North 

 America during Pleiocene times, has recently been reinvestigated by a 

 party of distinguished ethnologists connected with the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution. They obtained much valuable information of a geologic and 

 ethnologic nature, which renders it extremely improbable that the skull 

 can have the antiquity assigned it, and as a further supposed objection, 

 one of them has questioned the existence at that time of plants upon 

 which man could have subsisted. Fortunately there is quite an exten- 

 sive fossil flora associated in the same beds from which the skull in ques- 

 tion is supposed to have come. This flora was first studied and de- 

 scribed in 1878 by Leo Lesquereux, the well-known palaeobotanist, and 

 has been somewhat further supplemented by the writer. From this it 

 appears that there were numerous species of plants that might have 

 afforded an abundance of food-material available for man had he ex- 

 isted at that time. There were eleven species of Oaks {Qiiercus), two 

 Beeches {Fagjis), four Walnuts {Juglans), one Castanopsis, three Figs 

 {Fictis), two species of Zizyphus, and a single species each of I/c.v, Arto- 

 carpiis or Bread-fruit Tree, and u-Esculiis or Horse Chestnut, the latter 

 with a fruit about one inch in diameter. — F. H. Knoivlton^ U. S. AUi- 

 t tonal Museum., Washington., D. C. 



