BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 159 



and has, so far as we know, never received the diagnostic character 

 necessary to recognition ? 



The Annals of the Bolus Herbarium is a new periodical, of 

 which two parts (price 5s. net each) will appear each year. It is 

 a small quarto, edited by Dr. Pearson, the Professor of Botany of 

 the South African College, Capetown, in connection with which it 

 is issued : the present number contains forty-four well-printed 

 pages and six plates executed by some not very pleasing pro- 

 cess : the figures themselves however are informative and useful. 

 A portrait of Dr. Bolus appears as frontispiece : the papers 

 are on the Flora of the Great Karasberg, with an introduction 

 by Dr. Pearson and a list of the plants collected by F. and 

 L. Bolus and M. W. Glover, to which the plates relate ; a 

 description of a new genus of Iridcce (Pillansia) by F. Bolus, 

 which is not figured ; a Key to the Spermaphyta of the Cape 

 Peninsula ; and a review of Dr. Moss's Vegetation of the Peak 

 District, which doubtless " contains much that should be of 

 interest to students of the vegetation of S. Africa," but seems 

 somewhat out of place here. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on March 5th, a paper 

 was read by Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton, entitled " Short Cuts by 

 Birds to Nectaries," illustrated by lantern-slides from photo- 

 graphs and drawings made by the author during his travels in 

 Africa. He stated that birds were watched visiting flowers, and 

 flowers were examined for indirect evidence. Not only sunbirds 

 (which indeed are often great evaders of pollen), but many other 

 birds as well, visited certain flowers freely for their honey, and 

 were probably of use to them for cross-fertilization. Certain 

 birds, and some individuals more than others, apparently disliked 

 being besprinkled with pollen, and tended always to enter flowers 

 by breaches made by themselves or their predecessors. Other 

 birds tried, contrariwise, to enter the flowers by their natural 

 openings and so to be of use to them for cross-fertilization, 

 excepting in the case of individual flowers that happened, through 

 inconvenience in their own or the bird's position, &c., to ofl'er 

 some difficulty. If these were insufiiciently protected as well, 

 they were often either pierced or the openings already made in 

 them by the more indiscriminating birds were utilized. Insects 

 also tended to utilize the breaches made by birds, and so probably 

 in large part failed to counteract the latter's discriminative 

 influence. In most cases the eliminative effect, if any, of the 

 damage was not traced. In two instances it was (for individuals) 

 immediate and clear, flowers of a certain type being bodily 

 removed. 



At the meeting of the same Society on April 2nd, Mr. 

 E. Allen Kolfe, A.L.S., exhibited a series of coloured drawings of 

 five hybrid Ophryses, raised by M. Fernand Denis, Balaruc-les- 

 Bains, France, from Ophrys tenthredinifera, Willd., crossed with 

 the pollen of 0. aranifera Huds. ; together with the two parents. 

 This is believed to be the first hybrid Ophrys raised artificially, 



