150 The Plant World. 



ing inherent difficulties this department of botanical study is 

 more and more approaching the exactness characteristic of an 

 advanced period of development. 



An article by i\rr. S. B. Parrish in recent numbers of 

 Muhlenbergid on "The »Soulhern California Juncaceae" is \\()rth\ 

 nf attention. This is cf)nc]uded in the December, 1910, number 

 b) a tabular statement of regional and geographical distribuli'Mi, 

 Avith a summary from which one at a glance may note which of 

 the twenty-two sj^ccies listed are restricted to North America, 

 which ones reach South America, Europe, and Japan, which are 

 confined to the Pacific coast of North America, and those tliat 

 are endemic in vSouthcrn Califfunia. The descriptions indicate 

 character of habitat as well as distribution in altitude, and in 

 elude critical notes on the constancy of characters. With this 

 paper in hand one is in a position to study with satisfaction the 

 dilTicult group of which it treats, over the territory covered by (he 

 author, and to thank him for smoothing the Avay by telling the 

 exact facts in clear English -with the succinctness and mature 

 iudgment that come from many years of close oljservation and 

 haljits of conscientious expression. In another number of the 

 same journal there is a paper in which the writer makes new 

 species out of such characters as the following: "The perianths 

 are larger in the species here proposed as new; but a Ijettcr mark 

 * . * * is the great length of the oblong and leaf like seg- 

 ments of the involucre." Comment is unnecessarv. 



In a recent bulletin of the Bureau of Plant Industr}- (No. 

 204) entitled "Agricultural Explorations in the Fiuit and Nut 

 Orchards of China," Mr. Frank M. Meyer gives a readable ac- 

 count, illustrated bv recent photographs, of numerous A\ild and 

 cultivated jilants studied bv him in China and [Manchuria, 

 \\ith interesting suggestions as to habits and the availabilit\' of 

 liard\' varieties for extending the range over which a given 

 fruit ina\- be cnlti\ated in the United States. The need of dis- 

 c-riniinatifn in the im])ortation of fruits is suggested by a judg- 

 ment of one fruit as quoted : "it depends on what you eat them 



