148 NOTES — ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 



be successful, arrangements might possibly be made to extend the cultivation 

 of important types of the lower orders of plants, such as fungi, mosses, ferns, 

 liverworts, &c. , and also of aquatic plants. Battersea, Ravenscourt, and Vic- 

 toria Parks have been selected for the first experiments, the total costs of 

 which must not exceed £100. Battersea Park is already famous for its fine 

 sub-tropical gardens, which are greatly appreciated by botanists. 



FUNG J. 



Notes on Microscopic Fungi. — JEcidium leucospermum , D.C , the 

 Anemone Cluster-cup. As this species is stated to be rare in this country (Dr. 

 M. C. Ccoke writing, " we have found it but seldom, though often in search of 

 it;" and Dr Plowright observing of it "rare in Britain") it may be of 

 interest to record the species for Essex. It was found on leaves of Anemone 

 nemorosa, in a wood near Witham, in May and June last. I believe that this 

 is the first record for our county. 



Pucn'nea betonica, Alb. and Schw. Betony Brand This occurred to me 

 on leaves of Stachys betonica, growing on a piece of waste land in the parish 

 of Little Braxstead, in the month of June. — Edwin E. Turner, Coggeshall, 

 Essex, Julv 5th, 1899. 



New locality for Polyponis umbellatus. Fries. — Mr. E. W. Swanton 

 writes in the Joiimal of Botany (vol, xxxvi., 399) to " place on record another 

 locality for this rare and interesting fungus, hitherto only recorded from 

 Epping Forest. A few days ago I received a specimen gathered from a wood 

 at Inval, near Haslemere. This species is allied to P, intybaceus [which also 

 occurs in Epping Forest] and differs in the numerous much-branched pileoli 

 being circular and depressed ; in P. intybaceus chey are dimidiate," 



PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



The New Fossil Bird [Piophactun shrubsolci) from the London Clay. — 

 The Standard of July 27th, 1899, had the following particulars of tliis interest- 

 ing discovery: — " The British Museum (Natural History) has acquired a very 

 interesting fossil bird, which was recently discovered in the Isle of Sheppy, 

 enclosed in a large nodule of London Clay, by Mr W. H Shrubsole. The 

 remains, consisting of skull, pelvis, thigh-bone, and shoulder-bone, have been 

 carefully worked out of the clay matrix at the Museum, and determined by 

 Mr. C W. Andrews, B,Sc. of the Geological Department, to be a hitherto 

 unknown form of the Order Steganopodes (now represented in this country 

 by the Gannet, Cormorant, and Shag), in which all the four toes are united 

 b)' a web. He believes that it was allied to the Frigate-birds, and more 

 clo.sely to the Tropic-bird, both of which are now practically confined to the 

 tropical regions. There is, however, a striking difference in the size of the 

 hind limbs, which are relatively much larger in the newly-discovered fossil 

 than they are in the living Tropic-birds, in which, as ir the Frigate-birds, 

 they have undergone great reduction, owing to these species having aban- 

 doned the habits of diving and swimming common to other members of the 

 order. The Frigate-birds are as great robbers as the Skuas, their chief 

 victims being the Gannets, while the Tropic-birds are surface feeders, picking 

 ■up fish that swim near the top of the water. But these birds spend most of 



