The Scottish Naturalist. 43 



a handbook such as it is designed to be. The arrangement and classification 

 have been entirely revised, and have been altered so as to bring them into 

 accordance with the arrangement proposed by Jaeger in his Adumbratio 

 Muscorum, as seeming the most natural and convenient, besides which, with 

 a few alterations, it nearly coincides that of the " London Catalogue of British 

 Mosses, second edition." For many of the rarer species Scottish localities are 

 given. 



Dr. M. C. Cooke has completed his British Fresh-Water Algae ; parts 

 IX. and X. have appeared, including Scyionemece, Calotrichece, Rhodophyc&c, 

 and the index. Wherever possible, coloured illustrations have been supplied 

 Desmids and Diatoms have not been included ; but, even excluding these, th 

 work is a large and handsome one. and must prove essential to all that occupy 

 themselves with British Fresh-Water Alga?. 



Cooke's Illustrations of British Fungi (Hymenomycetes) has reached 

 its 26th part ; and in Grroillea the re-issue of descriptions of the species figured 

 in the Illustrations, is being continued. 



A Synopsis of the Bacteria and Yeast Fungi, by W. B. Grove, B.A., 

 is a re -issue, with additions, of a series of papers that appeared in Science 

 Gossip, and is founded in part on Die Pike, by Winter in the new edition of 

 Rabenhorst's Kryptogcunenflora. The book treats well of a group of minute 

 organisms now believed to be of the utmost importance because of their 

 influence on human economy, but that are even yet but little accessible to study 

 by any but specialists, on account both of their extremely minute size, and of 

 the literature upon them being scattered and not readily accessible to English 

 readers. The latter difficulty is in a very great measure removed by this work, 

 which ought to give a great stimulus to the investigation of these minute or 

 ganisms among us. The various forms are illustrated by woodcuts. 



Diseases of Field and Garden Crops (chiefly such as are caused by 

 Fungi), by Worthington G. Smith, F.L.S., is the title of a small manual by 

 a well-known mycologist on a most important subject. We shall give a longer 

 notice of it in this Magazine. 



rOKTHCOMING WOEKS ON BEITISH PUNGI. 



In no branch of Botany has the advance been more remarkable of late years 

 than in the study of Fungi, nor has the interest been confined to a few workers 

 only in any one country ; for in all European lands, and in North America, 

 ardent students of this group of plants have arisen. Nor is this wide-spread in- 

 terest to be wondered at when we bethink ourselves of the value of investigations 

 into these plants alike to the student of pure science, seeking to discover the 

 laws of vegetable life under their simplest conditions that he may the more 

 clearly comprehend these laws in their application to the higher types, or 

 desirous of ascertaining the grounds on which classification should be based to 

 be natural ; to the physician in his efforts to lessen the sum of human diseases; 



the economist who looks to the injury done by fungi to human welfare by 



