NEWS NOTES AND CURRENT COMMENT. 57 



of this species in Contr. Natl. Herb. III. 573, a portion of which I 

 quote: " Salix Barrattiana Hook, is one of the rarest of North 

 American willows. For more than fifty years it was known only 

 from Drummond's specimens in the Hookerian herbarium. Type 

 locality, 'Alpine swamps in the Rocky Mountains. ' It was redis- 

 covered by Prof. John Macoun, July 28, 1885, in thickets at high 

 elevations, Kicking Horse Lake, . . . and later, August, 

 1890, was collected in the same locality by Mr. James Macoun, in 

 fine specimens of both fruit and matured leaves." My specimens 

 were secured in a swamp in the Laramie Hills, at about 8,000 feet. 

 Only a few specimens were secured, and these are not mature, but, 

 now that a locality is known, pains will be taken to secure enough 

 material, so that this fine species may have fuller representation in 

 the herbaria. 



NEWS NOTES AND CURRENT COMMENT. 



Prof. W. A. Setchell sailed from San Francisco May 16 for 

 Victoria, British Columbia, en route to the eastern United States, 

 where he will spend the summer in research work in the cryptogamic 

 herbaria of Yale and Harvard Universities. 



Dr. Edw. W. Claypole, lately of Buchtell College, Akron, 

 Ohio, has accepted the Professorship of Natural History in the 

 Pasadena Polytechnic Institute of Southern California. 



We regret to note the death of M. Thoirias Kirk, F. L. S., of 

 Wellington, New Zealand. M. Kirk was the author of several 

 papers and monographs dealing with the New Zealand flora. He 

 is best known by his "Forest Flora of New Zealand," in which were 

 figured and described all the known trees and shrubs of the islands; 

 the exploitation of the timber is also treated of, so that the work 

 forms a complete treatise on the forestry of New Zealand. — j. b. d. 



The Gardeners' Chronicle of March 5, 1898, illustrates a gigantic 

 chrysanthemum raised in the Imperial Gardens at Tokyo. The 

 specimen is trained into a low, cone-shaped design, which is six feet 

 high and ten feet through at the base in one direction and fifteen 



