298 Recent Literature. fzoE 



the quality of paper and press work. Illustrating birds' nests 

 from photographs and accompanying them with descriptive 

 notes is a large field and will take a long time to exhaust the 

 material, but thus far the fund of new information has been but 

 slightly added to. 



Planzenfamilien drags itself along in an exasperating, pecu- 

 liarly German style. Hoffmann in the latest fascicle of Com- 

 positse completes Cynaroideae and Mutisiacese and lacks only a 

 few pages of Cichoriacese. He makes the number of genera 806. 

 The changes of interest to Western botanists are as follows: 

 Cnicus is restricted to the single species known as Carbenia beJie- 

 dicta. Carduus is maintained with the boundaries given by 

 Bentham & Hooker and Cirsium Scop, is adopted for all the 

 species with plumose pappus, known of late under the name of 

 Cnicus. Serinia Raf. is substituted for Apogon Ell. and Sitilias 

 Raf. for Pyrrhopappus DC; Microseris is maintained in the 

 limits of the Synoptical Flora, Calais, Uropappus, Phaeopappus, 

 Ptilophora, Nothocalais, etc., being included as sections or 

 synonyms; Stephanomeria is retained and Ptiloria Raf. resur- 

 rected by Mr. Greene is not even mentioned iu the synonymy. 

 Rafinesquia Nutt. is kept up and Nemoseris Greene given as 

 a synonym. In Lieferung 90, Taubert keeps up Hosackia. 



Silva of N'orth America vol. v. — Hamamelidae — Sapotaceaae. 

 By Charles Sprague Sargent, with fifty-four exquisite plates 

 drawn by C. E. Faxon. Too much cannot be said in praise of 

 this magnificent w'ork, the plates of which with detailed dissec- 

 tions are nearly as useful for study as the living plant, and make 

 one sigh for the wasted time spent over old plates in the vain 

 endeavor to find a meaning which the artist failed to give. The 

 only point we can suggest for improvement is that all the dissec- 

 tions in any given genus should be drawn from the same point of 

 view. The plates of special interest to us in the West are 

 Rhizophora Mangle, Conocarpus crecta, Laguncidaria racemosa, 

 Cereiis giganietis, Cormis Nuttallii, Sanibucus Canadensis var. 

 Mexicana, Savibuciis glatica, Arbutics Me^iziesii, A. Xalapensis 

 and A. Arizonica, raised to specific rank from a variety of A. 

 Xalapensis. Sambncus callicarpa Greene is included in the 



