NOTES AND COMMENT 



Dr. T. H. Kearney, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, has written an 

 interesting account of Plant Life on Saline Soils, which was delivered 

 as the address of the retiring President of the Botanical Society of 

 Washington in February, 1918 (Jour. Wash. Acad. Sci., March 1918). 

 This is a subject in which Dr. Kearney has had wide experience and his 

 conclusions will therefore command much respect. He seems, how- 

 ever, to have missed many important contributions of the last few 

 3^ears and says: "Comparatively few determinations have been made 

 of the osmotic pressure in the roots of halophytes." No reference 

 whatever is made to the work of Harris, Lawrence and others, which 

 surpasses the work of previous contributors in adequacy, exactness 

 and general importance. Their papers are easily accessible. Some 

 of them have been published in American journals as follows: 



Harris, J. Arthur, John V. Lawrence and Ross Aiken Gortner. On the 

 osmotic pressure of the juices of desert plants. Science, n. s., 40, 

 656-658 (Apr. 1915). 



Harris, J. Arthur, and J. V. Lawrence, with the cooperation of R. A. Gortner. 

 The cryoscopic constants of expressed vegetable saps as related to 

 local environmental conditions in the Arizona deserts. Physiol. Re- 

 searches, 2, 1-49 (1916). 



Harris, J. Arthur. Physical chemistry in the .service of phytogeography. 

 Science, n. s., 46, 25-30 (July 1917). 



Harris, J. Arthur, and John V. Lawrence. The osmotic concentration of the 

 sap of the leaves of mangrove trees. Biol. Bull., 32, 202-211 (March 

 1917). 



Harris, J. Arthur, and John V. Lawrence. The osmotic concentration of the 

 tissue fluids of Jamaican montane rain forest vegetation. Amer. 

 Jour. Bot., 4, 268-298 (May 1917). 



— D. T. MacDougal. 



The Geographical Review has recently published a paper by Dr. 

 Carl Skottsberg on the botanical features of the Juan Fernandez 

 Islands (May 1918). The two islands which form this group lie 360 

 and 450 miles from the Chilean coast. Their topography is extremely 

 rugged, and the smaller island reaches an altitude of 5300 feet although 

 it is only eight miles long. The small bodies of forest occup3dng the 



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