NOTES AND NEWS. 



Mr. O. T. Baron, whose collection of humraing-birds has 

 been placed in the museum of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, has 

 again started for South America for the purpose of making col- 

 lections of small birds, mammals, and insects. 



A new publication, Novitatcs Zoologiae, is to appear from the 

 museum of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, Tring, England, in 

 January, 1894. It will be issued in parts at irregular intervals 

 during the year, making an annual volume of 400 to 600 pages. 



Mrs. Katharine Brandegee, returning from Baja California, 

 with the botanical and zoological collections made by Mr. Bran- 

 degee and Dr. Eisen during the month of September, was ship- 

 wrecked off the coast of California, near San Pedro, in a dense 

 fog, on the night of October 14th. The collections escaped 

 injury. 



In the course of a review of Index Kewensis by the editor of 

 the London Journal of Botany, some remarks are made which 

 may be of use in helping us to " see ourselves as others see us." 

 " The aim is to record every genus and species of phanerogams 

 published before the end of 1885— a date which, fortunately for 

 the compiler, precedes the eruption of neo-American nomen- 

 clature, which is still raging almost unchecked." " His care 

 throughout has been to avoid the necessity of causing himself to 

 be cited as the authority for any combination of names; and in 

 this he contrasts favorably with too many modern writers, espe- 

 cially in America, whose often ill-considered resuscitation of dis- 

 used names seems to have been actuated by a ' desire to obtain a 

 cheap notoriety by making new combinations.' Changes of 

 nomenclature on a large scale should be left to the monographers 

 of genera, and Mr. Jackson has acted with judgment as well as 

 with modesty in not attempting them." 



The genus Agoseris Raf. into which the species have all been 

 transferred from Troximon both by Professor Greene and by 

 Otto Kuntze, appears to have been taken up before. The Kew 

 Index cites as synonyms of species of Troximon, A. cuspidata 



