MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND NEWS. 101 



Dr. Lucien M. Underwood, Professor of Botany in Columbia 

 University, New York City, and Dr. H. H. Rusby, of the New 

 York College of Pharmacy, have been spending the summer at the 

 Kew Herbarium. Dr. Rusby has been working up his South Amer- 

 ican collections. 



A PRIZE of one thousand marks is offered by the Prince .Joblo- 

 nowski Society at Leipzig, Germany, for the best study of the causes 

 which produce and control the direction of the lateral axes of shoot 

 and root system. The memoir must be submitted to the secretary 

 of the Society by November 30, 1900. 



Dr. Ezra Brainerd, of Middlebury, Vt., Mr. Marcus E. Jones, 

 of Salt Lake City, Utah, Dr. Harshberger, of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, have been botanizing in California this summer. 

 Dr. Brainerd has been especially devoting himself to field studies of 

 the Carices in the Sierra Nevada, and Mr. Jones to the Astragali. 



The Berlin Academy of Sciences offers a prize of two thou- 

 sand marks for a memoir based upon researches and observations 

 on the origin and behavior of varieties of cereals during the past 

 twenty years. The memoir may be written in German, Latin, 

 French, English, or Italian, and must be presented by December 

 31, 1898. 



Mr. T. S. Brandegee, of San Diego, has been botanizing — the 

 season being a favorable one — on all the islands off the western 

 coast of Lower California, including several small ones never before 

 visited by a botanist. He went with the schooner Wahlberg — A. 

 W. Anthony's vessel — as far down as San Jose del Cabo, where he 

 left the schooner, which continued to Socorro and Clarion Islands, 

 with a botanical collector aboard. 



Dr. Julius von Sachs died at Wiirzburg, on the 29th of last 

 May. He was born in Breslau in 1832, and for many years prior 

 to his death was Professor of Botany in the University of Wiirzburg. 

 Sachs was the author of the celebrated Vorlesungen nber Pflanzen- 

 •physiologie, better known to readers of English as Sachs' Physiology 

 of Plants. A sketch of his life, by Prof. Francis Darwin, appeared 

 in Nature, Ivi, 201, July 1, 1897. 



