BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 31 



interesting and useful work, will continue, though it has become 

 necessary to raise the annual subscription to lis. A change in the 

 officers is announced : Mr. S. H. Bickham, who has acted as treasurer 

 for thirteen years, is retiring, and will be succeeded by the present 

 secretary, Mr. George Goode ; his place will be taken by Mr. H. 

 Stuart Thompson, who occupied the same position in 1900-1905. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on December 9, Mr. 

 Lester-Garland exhibited a selection of the plants collected at Darfur 

 by Captain Lynes and remarked on their geographical distribution : 

 we hope to publish in an early issue a paper embodying Mr. Lestei*- 

 Garland's observations. Dr. Daydon Jackson made an interesting 

 communication on "The Norsemen in Canada in a.d. 1000, with the 

 Plants they collected." He explained that his remarks were limited 

 to the introductory part of a lecture prepared four years previously, 

 which had been postponed delivery. Starting from the paper read by 

 Dr. Erithiof Nansen before the Royal Geographical Society on the 

 6th November, 1911, he quoted from recent papers by Daniel Bruun 

 and H. P. Steensby in Meddelelser om Gronland, vols, xvi., xvii. in 

 1918, and a slightfsketch by Prof. H. 0. o Juel, in the current volume 

 of the S-vensJca Linne-Sdllskapets Arskrift, p. 61. The course 

 followed by the Norsemen was narrated, from their colonies in Green- 

 land across Davis Strait, to the North-east coast of Labrador, 

 southward through Belle Isle Strait to the valley of the St. Lawrence, 

 and the tract of country on its right bank, where vines were found 

 growing, unsown corn, and a tree called " Masur," these being 

 regarded as Vitis Labrusca L., Zizania aquatica L., and an Acer. 

 The reasons why these voyages were not continued were explained as 

 due to the weak colonies at that time in Greenland, the actual 

 starting-point, and the opposition of the natives, termed " Skraellings," 

 who prevented any attempts at settlements in " Vinland " — the "Wine- 

 land of the sagas of Erik the Red, and of Thorfinn Karlsefni, — the 

 northern part of New Brunswick. 



Mr. Martin Ni.thoff, of the Hague, has published a Naamlijst 

 of the plants published in the Flora Batava, with reference to the 

 volume in which each is described. It consists of two parts-— the first 

 containing the Latin, the second the " Nederlandsche Namen." In 

 the latter, the principle which often prevails in English books, pre- 

 supposing that every species must have a vernacular name, is carried to 

 an excess which seems to us absurd ; not only is each species so 

 provided, but genera which have no equivalent in Dutch appear here 

 under their Latin names with a Dutch rendering of the trivial — thus 

 " Paxillus, zwartfiuweelige." 



The first number has been published of The Floioerinq Plants 

 of South Africa, a new quarterly serial edited by Dr. Pole Evans, 

 Director of the Botanical Survey of the Union of South Africa', 

 published in England by Messrs. Lovell Reeve. Each part (15s.) 

 will contain ten coloured plates from drawings by Miss K. A. Lans- 

 dell ; the accompanying letterpress is by Dr. E. Percy Phillips, of 

 the National Herbarium at Pretoria. The first part contains descrip- 

 tions and figures of three new species — Arctotis Foster/, N. E. Br., 

 Cyrtanthus contractus N. E. Br., and Leucadeiidron Stokoei Phillips. 



