BOOK- NOTES, NEWS, ETC;' 207 



stimulus which causes the stipe to turn the fungus gun toward the 

 light. The swelling is transparent and refracts light, like the bulb 

 of a Florence flask tilled with water. Its diameter is always greater 

 than that of the black sporangium which it supports. The sporan- 

 giophore of Pilobolus appears to be the only ortho-heliotropic plant 

 organ known which takes up its positively heliotropic position owing 

 to the possession of a special light-perceiving cell-structure. Pilo- 

 bolus may well be described as a fungus with an optical sense-organ 

 or simple eye ; and, in using its eye for laying its gun, it appears to 

 be xmique in the plant world. 



At the same meeting was read a paper by Dr. N. Annandale. In 

 order to appreciate the fauna of a small island in the Chilka Lake on 

 the east coast of India, he had found it necessary to study the 

 vegetation. The area of the island is about one-third of a square 

 mile; the rocks are composed of garnet-bearing quartzite which vields 

 an infertile and scanty soil on weathering. The climate is relatively 

 dry. The vegetation consists mainly of trees, shrubs, and perennial 

 creepers, with a great scarcity of herbs, ferns, and epiphytes, and a 

 complete absence of palms, bamboos, screw-pines, and orchids. The 

 genus Ficus has the largest number of species (7) ; the commonest 

 tree is the Nim (Azadirachta indica), the commonest shrub Gly- 

 cosmis pentaphylla, and the commonest creeper Vitis quadrangularis. 

 Several distinct zones of vegetation can be distinguished. The most 

 interesting is the central thicket, in which Ficus gibbosa is rapidly 

 replacing F. bengalensis, giving space also, by its less spreading 

 habit, for trees and shrubs of other genera. The peculiarities of the 

 fauna, and especially its deficiencies and generalised character, can be 

 correlated directly with the vegetation. Col. M. J. Godfery read a 

 paper on the fertilisation of Cephalanthera, as observed by him in the 

 south of France on C. rubra, C. ensifolia, and C. grandiflora. He 

 holds that Cephalanthera is an old genus, existing before Fpipactis 

 came into being, and was not derived from the latter. 



The Contributions from the U.S. National Herbarium continue to 

 deal largely with North American grasses. In the latest that have come 

 to hand, Prof. Hitchcock (vol. xxii. part 3) has revisions of four genera 

 of Paniceae — Isachne, Oplismenus, Fchinochloa, and Chcetochloa , 

 the last replaces Setaria on the ground that that name " was applied to 

 a genus of lichens by Acharius and by Michaux at a date earlier than 

 that of its application to the grass genus." The treatment of the 

 species is exhaustive: thus under Chcetochloa geniculata (Lam.) 

 Millsp. and Chase are nearly four pages of synonyms, and similar 

 space is devoted to the distribution as shown by the collectors' 

 numbers cited. Each species is figured, but no dissections are given. 

 The common defect by which the heads of pages are rendered useless 

 is particularly noticeable here, not even the genera being there indi- 

 cated. On the same lines Mrs. Agnes Chase (xxii. part 4) describes 

 the North American species of Penuisetum, of which one (P. proli- 

 ficuni) is new. 



The incidental reference (Journ. Bot. 1920, 279) to the essay on 

 Fuchs in Canon Vaughan's The Mimic of the Wild Flowers should 

 have included some account of the copy of his De Historia Stirpium 

 in the Winchester Cathedral Library, on which the essav is based. 



