262 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



and his administrative conclusion is that "by far the greater pro- 

 portion of land required for aiforestation should be acquired by either 

 ordinary leasing or leases on a profit-sharing basis— the State only 

 purchasing areas sufficient to enable it to demonstrate in different 

 parts of the country that commercial forestry could be made to pay." 



G. S. BOULGER. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



Mr. T. F, Cheeseman sends us a copy of the account of the 

 Vascular Floi*a of Macquarie Island which he has contributed to 

 the ScientiHc Reports (vol. vii. pt. 3) of the Australian Antarctic 

 Expedition of 1911-14. The island, which "lies rather more than 

 600 miles to the south-west of New Zealand and is approximately 

 920 miles from Tasmania," was discovered in 1810 by Captain Hassel- 

 borough of the ship ' Perseverance,' which had been despatched from 

 Sydney for the purpose of searching for islands inhabited b}^ fur- 

 seals. "These were found to be extremely numerous ; it is said that 

 one vessel alone, during the first year of its operations, took away 

 more than 35,000 skins " ; as a natural consequence " the species was 

 nearly exterminated : it is now a rare occurrence to see a fur-seal 

 on Macquarie Island." The island, however, was visited for many 

 successive years for the purpose of procuring sea-elephant oil and 

 penguin oil," and the communication which thus existed between 

 New Zealand and the island led to visits from Dr. Scott in 1880 and 

 Mr. A. Hamilton in 1894, both of whom paid attention to its fauna 

 and flora. A subsidiary base in connection with the Australian An- 

 tarctic Expedition was established, and large collections were made 

 in all branches of biological science ; the botany was investigated by 

 Mr. Harold Hamilton, and this paper is mainly based on his collec- 

 tions. Mr. Cheeseman, however, gives a full account of the work of 

 previous collections, the first of which, consisting of eight species, 

 enumerated in the Flora Antarctica, was sent to W. J. Hooker by 

 Charles Eraser about 1810. The number of native species of flower- 

 ing plants enumerated is 30, of which three — Deschampsia penicil- 

 lata T. Kirk, Foa Hamiltoni T. Kirk, and Triodia macquariensis, 

 now first described — are endemic ; three ferns and a lycopod make up 

 the vascular flora — the other cryptogamy will be described in future 

 volumes of the Reports. The memoir abounds in notes, descriptive 

 and other, upon the species and concludes with an exceedingly 

 interesting and valuable chapter on the "affinities, history, and origin 

 of the flora " — it is in fact in ever}^ way a scholarly piece of work. 

 In the index the specific names precede those of the genera — " acaulis 

 Ranunculus" — a somewhat novel arrangement; the genera, how- 

 ever, are also indexed. 



We have received the first number (July) of The Journal of the 

 Arnold Arboretum, edited by Prof. C. S. Sargent, which is designed 

 to take fche place of Garden and Forest, the last volume of which 

 appeared in 1897. The new Journal, which is to appear quarterly, 

 will contain "notes on trees and shrubs or descriptions of new 

 species and their relationships, letters from correspondents, and notes 

 on the vegetation of countries visited by officers and agents of the 



