,8^. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 9 



also act as Keeper of the Government Herbarium, which is handed 

 over to the same institution. According to the Argus, this change is 

 necessitated by the insufficiency of the Government grant — a subsidy 

 of ^500 per annum having to meet an expenditure of about £^1,400. 

 The balance has been made up by the business of seed-selling, " and 

 the whole energies of the staff were incessantly directed to the one 

 object of making money enough to pay the wages and repair dilapida- 

 tions." For the last ten years Professor MacOwan has maintained 

 the institution in this manner without incurring debt. As there is 

 apparently no hope of improvement, the Professor has at last given 

 up the business, assuming, probably, that his scientific knowledge 

 and ability will be more useful as Government Botanist in the 

 Agricultural Department. The gardens will be placed under the 

 charge of a competent horticulturist, who will doubtless be all that 

 municipal authorities desire. Under the circumstances detailed in 

 the Argus, the change may have been inevitable, but it is none the less 

 distressing. The value of experimental gardens and stations cannot 

 be over-rated. We have only lately had a splendid instance in the 

 work of Messrs. Harrison and Bovill at Barbados, resulting in the 

 production of sugar canes from seeds, for the first time in the New 

 World. This may be of the greatest importance to the sugar-cane 

 industry and to our sugar-producing Colonies. Hence it is sad news 

 to hear that a botanical garden cannot be supported in a country with 

 a Flora so rich and characteristic as that of the Cape. 



Good portraits, with brief biographies, of two British naturalists 

 appeared last month. Mr. H. T. Stainton, F.R.S., forms the subject 

 of the monthly biographical sketch in the February British Naturalist ; 

 and Mr. Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., was included in the Mining 

 JourtiaVs series of " Familiar Faces " on February 6th. We are glad 

 to learn that, notwithstanding his retirement from the official staff of 

 the British Museum, Mr. Etheridge continues to devote his energies 

 to the arrangement of the Stratigraphical Collection of British 

 Sedimentary Rocks. 



The Scottish. Naturalist has this year been transformed into a 

 beautifully printed quarterly publication, the Annals of Scottish 

 Natural History, with occasional lithographed plates. It is under the 

 editorial direction of Professor J. W. H. Traill and Messrs. J. A. 

 Harvie Brown and W. Eagle Clarke. A similar journal, to be 

 published monthly in Dublin, is promised next month under the style 

 of the Irish Naturalist. This will be the official organ of the Royal 

 Zoological Society of Ireland, of the Belfast Natural History and 

 Philosophical Society and Naturalists' Field Club, of the Dublin 

 Naturalists' Field Club, and of the Armagh Natural History and 

 Philosophical Society. It will be edited by Messrs. G. H. Carpenter 

 and R. Lloyd Praeger. 



