198 The Pi.ant World. 



courses in botany and opportunity for research in Taxonomy, 

 Applied Mycology, and Ph\siology, as well as independent re- 

 search open to persons qualified to carry it on. The extensive 

 equipment, consisting in part of a new and well equipped fire- 

 proof laboratory, a library of over 60,000 books and pamphlets, 

 an herbarium of over 600,000 sheets of specimens, and a col- 

 lection of living plants including upwards of 10,000 species or 

 varieties, may l:»e taken as some indication of the facilities nov.- 

 offered to botanical students and investigators. From this 

 institution, whose complete equipment for such work is compara- 

 tively recent, if we pass in review such of the older universities 

 as Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Chicago, 

 and as manv more state and other institutions, we can not fail 

 to observe in this country a development of facilities for instruc- 

 tion, and especially for research, in various departments of bot- 

 any that is hardly short of phenomenal. The explanation ap- 

 pears to be that the subject which within the memory of manv of 

 us was treated with kindly indulgence, or in some cases with 

 supercilious contempt, by members of the philosophical faculty 

 has proven its educational value, which is now freely admitted 

 on every hand, and furthermore that its practical applications 

 have become so numerous and important that they are frankly 

 recognized and liberally provided for as matters of state and 

 nation-wide ccncern. There is perhaps no subject in the school 

 curriculum the status of which has so completely changed within 

 a relatively short period of time. — V.M.S. 



The Catalogue of the Agricultural Exhibition of Switzer- 

 land held at Lausanne in 1910, contains various suggestive 

 contributions, among which is a noteworthy one on the plants 

 of Switzerland that serve as soil indicators, by Dr. C. Schroter. 

 The author divides the plants under consideration into three 

 classes: 1. Such as are strictly confined to a particular quality 

 of soil, c. q. humus plants. 2. Those that show a preference 

 for certain soils without being strictly confined to them. 3. 

 Plants so far indifferent to the substratum that they cannot 

 be employed as indicators of soil factors 



Certain principles stated at the outset show that the study 

 involves constant allowance for and widespread knowledge^ of 

 the concurrent action of various factors. These include (1) 



