THE PLANT WORLD 187 



but it has since been visited by people who have verified the finders' 

 statement. The monster was measured six feet from the ground and it took 

 a line 154 feet and 8 inches long to encircle it, making it over 51 feet in 

 diameter. The tree is a few rods from the compan}- 's boundary line 

 and is on the Government reserve. It will therefore be of interest to 

 sightseers and will escape the woodman's axe. — American Gardening. 



The Department of Forestr^^ at the World's Fair, St. Louis, has sent 

 out a preliminary circular specifying the classes of entries in this de- 

 partment Ample space has been assigned, and the exhibits promise to 

 be very interesting. 



The New York Botanical Garden has had two rarities in flower in 

 its greenhouse recently. One is an orchid, a species of Oncidium, which 

 develops flower clusters of enormous length, the specimen at the Gar- 

 den having five at one time, the shortest of which was 4 feet 3 inches, 

 while the longest was 12 feet 6 inches. The other plant is a species of 

 palm, endemic in the Seychelles Islands, and known as PJwenicophorium 

 Sechellarum. Until the time of its first flowering, at the Garden, in 

 January, 1901, the plant had not been known to flower in cultivation. 



Notes of Current Literature. 



Mr. Eoland M. Harper, accompanied by Mr. Percy L. Ricker, of 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, visited the well-known Okefinokee 

 Swamp, on the border line between Georgia and Florida, during the 

 past summer, and tells of his experiences in a letter to Dr. John K. 

 Small, part of which is published in the current issue of Torreya. This 

 region has apparently been neglected by botanists. Mr. Harper found 

 the swamps to consist largely of open country, with Nuttall's bald 

 cypress {Taxodiiim imhricariam) as the predominant tree. In many 

 respects the vegetation is said to resemble that of the Great Dismal 

 Swamp, in Virginia, which is much better known. 



In an article on "Seed Dispersal of Viola rotundifolia" Mr. R. G. 

 Leavitt, in Rhodora, describes the remarkable power of projection ex- 

 hibited by this species. The opening seed valves hurl the seeds easily 

 from one to two feet ; three seedlings were found at a distance of five 

 feet, and one at a distance of nine feet. 



The Bulletin of the Botanical Department of Jamaica contains a 

 most interesting article on vanilla culture in the Seychelles Islands. 

 It appears that cultivation is so profitable that the little colony of 



