114 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



upon air. In reality it is a sea-weed Demarestia aculeata which 

 the Japanese make a business of collecting and preparing for 

 display. Its feathery appearance makes it a very decorative 

 object, but the statement that it is alive and lives on the air is 

 of course, all nonsense. 



Plants in the Antarctics. — Of course a botanist ac- 

 companied Lieutenant Shackleton's party in a search for the 

 south pole but he doubtless had an easy berth as soon as the 

 real journey began, if his sole duties were the collection and 

 study of plants. Plant life appears to be pretty scarce in high 

 southern latitudes, but the party encountered certain plants 

 from warmer regions that they would have gladly avoided. 

 The leader of the party reports that their health was excellent 

 except for certain colds that were evidently due to germs from 

 a bale of blankets. Thus these minute but annoying plants that 

 produce so much discomfort in lower latitudes during the 

 winter have extended their migrations to the frozen south. 



Zoological Nomenclature. — The zoologists have 

 slightly the advantage of the botanists in the matter of nomen- 

 clature in that they started earlier to make a "stable" nomen- 

 clature but in their efforts in this direction they Jiave been no 

 more successful than have those of the name tinkerers of 

 plants. In a recent number of Science, Jonathan Dwight, Jr., 

 pays his respects to the zoological code as follows : "Codes do 

 not evolve but are made for convenience and we should quit 

 burning incense before the shrine of priority if we seek sta- 

 bility. Priority is rather a bog from whch the nomenclatural 

 muck-rakers exhume the fossil names of a past age. We 

 shall always be at the mercy of forgotten names tucked away 

 in stray volumes unless there be some "statute of limitation" 

 — the bug-bears of code makers. Let the upturning of the 

 names of obscure writers be stopped and the remodelling of 

 codes with fresh interpretations of their canons be prevented. 



