NOTES AND COMMENT 



In connection with the San Diego meeting of the Pacific Division of 

 the American Association, on August 8, 9, and 10, 1916, the biologists 

 of the western and Pacific states will meet to organize The Western 

 Society of Naturalists. This follows upon the action of the Executive 

 Committee of the American Society of Naturalists in rejecting the 

 proposed affiliation of the Biological Society of the Pacific as a western 

 section. 



Mr. Samuel N. Rhoads, of the Franklin Bookshop, Philadelphia, 

 has reprinted a rare and little known work which is apparently the 

 earliest publication dealing with American plants and written by an 

 American. This is WOliam Young's Catalogue D'Ai'bres, Arbustes 

 et Plantes Herbacees D'Amerique, printed at Paris in 1783. Young 

 was a practical gardener, collector of living plants for export, and a 

 traveler through the southern states. His annotated list of some 400 

 species gives much better descriptions of the soil conditions under 

 which the plants are found than do the most recent lists of American 

 plants written by Americans. 



The Forest Products Laboratory, at Madison, calls attention to the 

 importance of the sanitary handling of lumber and the maintenance of 

 sanitary conditions in lumber yards. The cause of their admonition 

 is the frequent occurrence of the so-called house fungus (Merulius 

 lachrymans) and other wood-destroying fungi in the lumber yards of 

 the eastern states. Such infection is doubtless responsible for the 

 decay of timber in buildings in the same localities through the agency 

 of these fungi. 



The American Geographical Society has issued a sumptuous four 

 hundred page Memorial Volume of the Transcontinental Excursion 

 of 1912. In addition to considerable historical matter relative to the 

 excursion, the book contains papers by some twenty of the foreign 

 participants, chiefly on features of American geography in which they 

 were particularly interested. • 



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