189 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. 



At the meeting of the Lianean Society on April 4th, 1901, 

 Mr. W. B. Heinsley exhibited specimens of Sapium and Hei-ea and 

 Ca^tilloa, with a view to clear up certain questions concerning the 

 Rubber-trees, by examining a large series of plants and seeds 

 forwarded by Mr. Jenman, Government Botanist in British Guiana. 

 The genus Hevm included ten or a dozen described species in- 

 habiting eastern tropical South America, but none in the West 

 Indies. Hevea brasi liens is, the source of the true Pard rubber, 

 is not very different from Hevea ijuianensis, which is restricted 

 to French Guiana, the differences between them being shown in 

 the figures given of the floral structure and seeds in Hooker's 

 Icones PInntarum, plates 2570-2577. It was formerly supposed 

 that two species of Hevea might be distinguished in British 

 Guiana, one {Hevea pauciflora) having thin leaves and a hairy 

 ovary, the other thick coriaceous leaves and a glabrous ovary ; 

 but, after examining a large number of specimens, Mr. Hemsley 

 had come to the conclusion that the differences were not constant, 

 and that all the specimens exhibited might belong to one spe- 

 cies, and merely represented individual variation. The exhibition 

 demonstrated the difficulty of determining species of Hevea from 

 imperfect specimens, and especially from seeds alone. A paper 

 was read by Messrs. W. B. Hemsley and H. H. Pearson. " On a 

 Small Collection of Dried Plants made by Sir Martin Conway in 

 the BoHvian Andes in 1898-99." This collection contained but 

 forty-six species, but these were of special interest from the great 

 height at which they were found, /. f. between 18,000 ft. and 

 18,700 ft. above sea-level. The highest Andine plants on record 

 were stated to be Mah-astruiu jiabel latum Wedd., and a grass, Dey- 

 eiixia glacialis Wedd. 



Dr. E. L. Greene publishes, in the Catholic Uyiiversitij Bulletin 

 of Washington for April, a severe criticism of "Some Literary 

 Aspects of American Botany." " It would be extreme to say that, 

 from the literary point of view, the condition of American botany 

 has been retrograding somewhat rapidly for ten or a dozen years 

 past, and is in a state which I am sure the forefathers of our 

 Science in this country, the good men of sixty and of thirty years 

 ago, would think of as deplorable ; and they would be right." 

 Dr. Greene, we think, weakens his case by the strength of his 

 language, and by a certain vein of hypercriticism which pervades 

 his paper ; but he has written an interesting essay (to be followed, 

 we gather, by others on the same subject), to which we may take 

 occasion to recur. 



We have received a circular with reference to the formation of 

 a new society, to be called the International Botanical Association, 

 which is to be inaugurated at a meeting to be held in the botanical 

 laboratory of the University of Geneva on the 7th of August. 

 '• The chief object of the Association will be the foundation of a 

 bibliographic periodical criticising in a perfectly impartial manner 



