liOOK-XOTKS, NBAVS, ETC. 183 



good example of his careful work upon old types, and lie subsequently 

 monographed the Tropical and South African species for the flora's 

 of those regions. His contributions to this Journal included notes 

 on Formosan plants (1882, 358), a revision of Donax and Schu- 

 mannianthus (1907, 242), the description of a new variety (virescens) 

 of Ophrys muscifera (1907, 282), and a paper on Rubus fruticosus 

 (1916, 55), his conclusions as to which elicited a protest from 

 British batologists {pp. cit. 181). Bolfe contributed to Journ. Linn. 

 Soc. xxi. 283 (1884) an important paper on the Flora of the Philippine 

 Islands, to which he had paid much attention ; his help is acknow- 

 ledged by Vidal in Phanerogams Cumingiance Philippinarum 

 (1885) : he also contributed to the Kew publications. He was an 

 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, at whose meet- 

 ings he was a regular attendant, and in 1885 was elected an Associate 

 of the Linnean Society. A tribute to his personal character is paid 

 in the Gardeners'' Chronicle of April 23. His forty years' service at 

 Kew was one long period of perseverance and steady performance : 

 his achievement is the more remarkable in that he was seriously 

 handicapped by deafness. He is commemorated in the genus Rolfea— 

 a name substituted by Zahlbriickner for Jenmania, which had been 

 been bestowed by tiolfe upon a G-uiana orchid in ignorance that it 

 was preoccupied (see Jourit Bot. 1898, 493). 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on April 21, Prof. P. 

 Newstead delivered a lecture, entitled " Some Observations on the 

 Natural History of the Upper Shiri Piver, Nyasaland." The flora 

 was dealt with under three sections: — (1) the river and its banks, 

 (2) the open " dambo " or savannah, and (3) the forest. As regards 

 the flora of the river, attention was called to the plants forming the 

 fringe of the sudd, namely Pistia Stratiotes and Trapa bispinosa. 

 The width of the sudd in the river a little south of the Lake Malombe 

 was given as approximately thirty-seven yards on either side ; the 

 width, however, varied at different points. The banks of the river 

 in places were clothed with more or less dense vegetation, consistino- 

 of a few palms, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), Kigelia sp., with 

 here and there the scarlet-flowered climber Combretum microphyllum, 

 etc. In the open dambo, during the dry season, the plants were 

 nearly all resting ; the commonest was a species of Asparagus and 

 an undetermined species of Leguminosse. The forest proper is fringed 

 on the river-side by Acacias of various species, of which flat-topped 

 species predominated; hereabouts the Euphorbia grandidens (?) 

 was also very common. In the forest the tree most commonly met 

 with was the Iron-wood, Copaifera Mopane. Ebony (Diospyros 

 spp.) was also fairly common, and so also was a species of Parlcia. 



The Kew Bulletin (no. 2, April) contains descriptions of "New 

 or Noteworthy South African Plants," by J. Burtt Davy ; Decades 

 48-49 of " New Orchids," collected by Sir Eyerard im Thurn mostly 

 in the Fiji Group, described by the late P. A. Rolfe ; " Notes oil 

 Golletotri chum and Phoma in Uganda," b}^ W. Small; and a paper on 

 '• Kikuyu Grass" (Pennisetum clandestinum Chiov.) by Dr. Stapf. 



In "the Bulletin of the Torrey Club for March Mr. S. F. Blake 

 gives a description of Neomillspaughia, a new genus of Polygonaceas 



