v^ 



254 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



brick-earth deposited in the old river-bed. It was in the lowest 

 part of this stratum that the wood was found, together with palaeo- 

 lithic flint-flalces. Bones of the rhinoceros have been also found in 

 the same pit, and in contemporaneous deposits remains of two other 

 species of rhinoceros, the mammoth, and Irish elk, together with 

 bones of still existing animals. There can be no doubt, therefore, 

 of the date of the fragment, and it is hardly likely to have been 

 introduced at so early a date. It is to be regretted that so little 

 attention has been paid to the flora of Pleistocene times. Kemains 

 of plants have been found from time to time, but have been generally 

 disregarded and not preserved. — H. N. Eidley. 



Fruit and Seed of Eomecon chionantha. — Although I have 

 had this interesting plant in cultivation ever since its discovery, I 

 have not been able to coax it to ripen fruit. It has, however, set 

 one or two this spring in the Hongkong Gardens, and I am 

 indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Ford, the Superintendent, for the 

 opportunity of examining one of these ; and am thus enabled to 

 render the generic character more complete : — 



Capsula stipitata, oblonga, a basi usque ad apicem dehiscens, 

 valvis placentas duas cum stylo persistente nudantibus. Semina 

 oblonga, testa Crustacea, pallide brunnea, in sicco tuberculata, 

 raphe cristata. Embryo minutus, juxta basin albuminis carnoso- 

 oleosi, flaventis, situs. 



It will be seen that Eomecon differs (so far as carpological 

 characters are concerned) from Sangumaria only by the capsule- 

 valves becoming free from the base and remaining attached at the 

 apex, instead of the contrary mode of dehiscence, and by the seeds 

 bei^g tuberculate and smooth. — H. F. Hance. 



'"^ACciNiuM FoRBEsii. — In tlius naming a new Vaccinium from 

 Sumatra in Mr. H. 0. Forbes' recent work, ' Wanderings of a 

 Naturalist ' (p. 278), I overlooked a species from Africa already named 

 Vacciniuvi Forbesii by Sir W. J. Hooker ; I therefore propose the 

 name V. Dempoense for the Sumatran species, from the locality. 

 Mount Dempo, where Mr. Forbes discovered it. — W. Fawcett. S^ 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



The first volume of the Botany of 'The Voyage of H.M.S. 

 Challenger' has appeared; it is entirely the work of Mr. W. B. 

 Hemsley, whose name, strangely enough, does not appear on the 

 title-page. The book, which is published at £2, contains four 

 memoirs : — i. Eeport on our present state of knowledge of various 

 Insular Floras (pp. 75) ; ii. Keport on the Botany of the Bermudas 

 (pp. 135, tt. 13) ; iii. Keport on various other Islands of the Atlantic 

 and Southern Oceans (pp. 299, tt. 39) ; iv. Eeport on Juan 

 Fernandez, South-eastern Moluccas, and Admiralty Islands, with 

 an appendix on the dispersal of plants by oceanic currents and 

 birds (pp. 333, tt. 11). Each report is paged separately, but the 



