190 



THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



all botanical publicatious in such a way that the important be 

 separated from the less so. It will not-— as some periodicals do — 

 devote page after page to pubUcations of questionable value, while 

 most important works are put off with two or three lines or even 

 not mentioned at all. The criticisms will — at the desire of the 

 contributors — be published in engiish, frencb or german. All 

 will be submitted to the judgment of au editor nominated by the 

 Association and responsible to it. Under no circumstances the 

 membership will cost more than 25s., including the gratis delivery 

 of the periodical." Dr. J. P. Lotsy, Wageningen, Holland, receives 

 applications for membership. 



The Botanical Gazette for March contains a detailed and very 

 trenchant criticism of '• Some Recent Publications and the Nomen- 

 clatorial Principles they represent," from the pen of Mr. M. L. 

 Fernald. It is based on Mr. Heller's recent Cittalofjue of North 

 American Plants, to the methods of which we took exception on 

 p. 119, but deals unsparingly with the " Rochester Code," and the 

 results of its application. Mr. Fernald advocates the adoption of 

 the Berlin rule for generic names, and " the so-called Kew rule of 

 retaining the first specific name used under the accepted genus." 



Messrs. Roscoe Pound and F. E. Clements have issued a hand- 

 some volume on the Phytor/fOf/raphy of Xehraska, embodying a 

 general survey of " the result of nearly five years of active study 

 of the floral covering of Nebraska, carried on by members of the 

 Botanical Seminar in the Botanical Survey of the State : " it is 

 " published by the Seminar " at Lincoln, Neb. The first edition 

 of the work was issued in 1897, but the greater part of it was de- 

 stroyed by fire. The work is of course mainly of local interest, 

 but is very comprehensive ; the table of contents occupies four 

 pages of small print, the main division being into five chapters — 

 I. Physiognomy and Climatology; II. Statistics and Regional 

 Limitations ; III. The Vegetation-Forms of the Flora ; IV. The 

 Ecological and Biological Relations of the Natural Groups ; 

 V. The Plant Formations : these headings, however, give no 

 adequate idea of the amount and varied interest of the information 

 contained in the volume. There is a very complete and rather 

 extravagantly printed index of the plants referred to ; the nomen- 

 clature is that of Britton and Brown's Illastrate'l Flora, and the 

 objectionable innovation of trinominals is adopted. The conve- 

 nience of the book for purposes of reference is greatly impaired by 

 the absence of italics for the names of plants, the whole text being 

 printed in excellent but uniform type; the inconvenience is inten- 

 sified by the spelling of all specific names with a small initial letter. 



Under the auspices of the Scliweiz. botanisch. Gesell.-chaft, the 

 elements of a great work on the Cryptogamic Flora of Switzerland 

 are in course of publication. The composition of the several treatises 

 being entrusted to acknowledged ex})erts, the completed work is likely 

 to be of au exhaustive character. We have just received the second 

 part of the first volume — Die Farnkrdiiter der Schweiz, by H. Christ 

 (Bern : K. J. Wyss. 1900. Pp. 189 ; 28 figures in the text. Price 

 i francs) — which is a monograph of all the vascular cryptogams of 



