NOTES AND NEWS. 139 



Dr. Ignatius Urban, of the Berlin Botanical Garden, has long 

 been known to be at work on a comprehensive flora of the West Indies. 

 The first part of his work has just been published, and is devoted to a 

 very complete bibliography of the subject. The descriptive portion 

 of the work is awaited with much interest in this country, especially 

 since we have territorial interests in the West Indies. 



It appears from observations made by Mr. F. L. Stevens, of the 

 University of Chicago, and published in the February Botanical 

 Gazette, that snails and worms are active agents in the distribution of 

 the spores of certain deleterious fungi. Thus a grape-vine was ob- 

 served to have the Mildew {Uncimila necator) distributed along the 

 path they had followed in crawling over fresh leaves. 



The Mistletoe has become so popular as a Christmas decoration in 

 England that it seems likely to be exterminated in certain places. It 

 was formerly permitted to grow^ in many apple-orchards, sometimes 

 seriously injuring the trees, but with the increased demand this has 

 all been removed. In some places steps are being taken to propagate 

 it, and young apple-trees can now be purchased on which the parasite 

 has become established. 



Prof. C. S. Sargent has a long article on some new or little known 

 North American trees, all but one of them palms, in the February 

 Botanical Gazette In the volume of the Silva, published in 1896, the 

 genus Thrinax included two species, with allusion to two others known 

 only from fragments. Since that time Professor Sargent has made 

 several trips to the keys of southern Florida with the result of accu- 

 mulating sufficient material to determine the status of these little 

 known forms. As a result he has divided the genus Thrinax, which 

 now includes three species, one of which is here described as new, 

 and has proposed a new genus — Coccothrinax — which contains two 

 species. He also describes a magnificent new palm under the name of 

 Serenoa arborescens. It is thirty or forty feet in height, with one or 

 several stems only three or four inches in diameter. The leaves form 

 a crown at the summit of the stem, and are two feet wide and long, 

 and are on petioles about two feet in length. It grows on the mar- 

 gins of swamps near the Chockoloskee river in southwestern Florida. 

 The other tree is a new elm {Uliuits scrotina), with a trunk forty to 

 fifty feet in height and from two to three feet in diameter, which has 

 long been confused with the Cork Elm {U. racaiiosa). It is an autumn- 

 flowering species, and thus easily distinguished from all others. It is 

 found on the banks of the French Broad river near Dandridge, Tenn. ; 

 on limestone bluffs of the Cumberland river near Nashville, Tenn. ; 

 near Huntsville, Ala., and Rome, Ga. 



