NOTES AND COMMENT 



Nine months ago two prizes were offered by The Plant World for 

 the best papers on any subject connected with the water relations of 

 plants. The term for the submitting of papers closed on December 1 

 without any manuscripts having been received for competition. Are 

 we to take it from this that the investigation of water relations is 

 an unpopular subject and held in slight regard, or merely that the 

 monetary morsel which we offered was too small to tempt our col- 

 leagues? We have more recently offered two prizes for papers in soil 

 physics, to be submitted before December 1, 1916. We sincerely trust 

 that this offer will not result in a complete abeyance of work in that 

 subject during the year. 



Dr. Herman E. Hasse, well known as a student of the lichens, died 

 on October 29, 1915, at the Soldiers' Home, at Santa Monica, Cali- 

 fornia, within a few months of his eightieth year. He was a native 

 of Freiburg, Saxony, whence he emigrated with his parents at the age 

 of nine. His training in medicine was begun in St. Louis, continued 

 at Leipzig, and Prag, and completed at Wurzburg, where he received 

 his degree in 1861. On returning to America Dr. Hasse served through- 

 out the Civil War as a surgeon in the Ninth Wisconsin Volunteer In- 

 fantry. At the close of the war he practiced in Milwaukee, Arkansas 

 and Missouri, and in 1885 settled in Los Angeles. From 1888 until 

 1905 he was chief surgeon to the Soldiers' Home. Dr. Hasse was an 

 authority on the lichens of the Pacific Coast, and a long series of papers 

 on this group are to be found under his name in the Bulletin of the 

 Southern California Academy of Sciences. His best known work was 

 the comprehensive treatise on "The Lichen Flora of Southern Cali- 

 fornia," published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1913. Dr. Hasse 

 was also a diligent student and collector of the higher plants, and his 

 interest is commemorated in the genus Hasseanthus, dedicated to him 

 by Dr. Rose. His thorough work as a pioneer in the botany of southern 

 California, and the high esteem in which he was held by his friends and 

 associates will long keep his memory fresh. — Fordyce Grinnell, Jr. 



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