BOTANICAL GAZETTE. .321 



and potatoes, and Prof. W. J. Beal has an illustrated paper on "Grasses," in- 

 tended to give farmers some knowledge of the more common grasses they are 

 likely to meet. 



It is with a sense of personal loss that we record the death of Chas. F. 

 Parker, curator of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, which took 

 place September 7. Mr. Parker was a bookbinder, being in charge of the bind- 

 ing department of Oodey's Lady's Book, but as a botanist he was known in every 

 herbarium of any pretension. His fine specimens of the famous New Jersey flora 

 were always in demand, and no one had a more intimate knowledge of that 

 region. His last days were spent in arranging the large herbarium of the 

 Academy, and his friends write that the results were most satisfactory. Mr. 

 Parker was one of the men that botanists hoped to meet next summer in Phila- 

 delphia, but his work remains as an humble but characteristic memorial of 

 him. 



J. E. Taylor, in Science Gossip, records the discovery of flies carrying away 

 upon their feet the pollen masses from Asekpias, and it "struck him that it 

 might be the method in which Asclepius is fertilized by insects," and he there- 

 upon "suggests to North American botanists to examine " their various species 

 of Ascicpias, and see if insects are entangled, and have " pollen masses adhering 

 to them." Where has Mr. Taylor been all these years? North American botan- 

 ists were quick-sighted enough to discover this long ago, and even in some of 

 our little Western colleges for several years the classes have been watching the 

 insects at this work, and at the same time knew that they were examining what 

 was common knowledge to every botanist in North America. 



Dr. Julius Sachs has just published a book entitled Vorksungen iiber Pjlanzen- 

 physiologie, which is a series of lectures upon plant physiology, discussing the sub- 

 ject in a less formal way than his Lehrbueh. In reference to the latter, which 

 has been so generally and constantly used in the German, French and English 

 languages, it is interesting to hear the author expressing himself as follows : 

 "As long as the artist is pleased with his work, he can add a touch here and 

 there, or can even go in for greater changes; but this is not sufficient when the 

 work has ceased to be the expression of his idea, and this is the attitude I stand 

 in with regard to my text-book." This is given as a reason for not attempting 

 another edition of the text-book, and makes English speaking botanists all the 

 the more eager for a translation of the new work. 



Two things struck A novice at Minneapolis rather unpleasantly in re- 

 gard to the papers presented. The first was their careless preparation and still 

 more careless presentation, half an hour being spent when five or ten minutes 

 would have more than sufficed for a much clearer statement of all that was 

 meant to be said. The second was the nature of the papers. Some were mere 

 essays about well known facts, and most were observations about such trivial 

 things that they could hardly be called profitable. While it may not be the 

 object of the A. A. A. S. to cultivate a high degree of technicality, it should de- 

 mand a certain amount of original work in the papers accepted. 



