BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 327 



extend their present utility as a centre from which colleges and botany 

 schools could be supplied with material for teachmg and research, and 

 in which students could make use of the existing facilities for the 

 study of systematic botany. 



A NEW botanical magazine, The Journal of Indian Botany, 

 edited by Mr. P. F. Fyson, of Presidency College, Madi-as, is bemg 

 published by the Methodist Publishing House of that city. The 

 Journal " has been founded for the publication of original papers in 

 Botany which would not naturally find a place in the existing Indian 

 journals, for there is no other journal in India which could accept a 

 paper on ecology, physiology, histology, or the cryptogams, except 

 such as might be of agricultural interest." The first number (Sep- 

 tember) contains the following papers : " Dimorphic Carpellate Flower 

 oi Acalijpha inclica'' by L. A. Kenoj^er, with two plates; "The 

 Myxophyceae of Lahore " by S. L. Ghose, with plate ; " On Alysi- 

 carjous rugosus and its allies," by L. G. Sedgwick; a "Note on the 

 Ecology of Spinifex squarrusns " by P. F. Fyson and M. Balasub- 

 rahmanyam ; and a useful series of abstracts of current literature 

 relating to Indian botany. 



The Kew Bulletin (no. 5) contains a very interesting account, 

 by Mr. W. Dallimore, of the Falkland Islands, especially relating to 

 their forestry, abstracted from the correspondence between Kew and 

 the Governors of the islands, dating from 1842 ; it includes an 

 account of the introduction of the Tussock Grass {Poa Jlahellata 

 Hook, f.) into Britain. Hooker's specific name for the plant, published 

 in Phil. Trans, clxviii. (1879) p. 22, footnote, doubtless stands, as the 

 first description is that of Lamarck (Encycl. ii. pt. 2, 462) as Festuca 

 jlahellata \ this part, according to Journ. Bot. 1906, 319 (which 

 should be consulted when the dates of the 'Kncyclo'pedia are in ques- 

 tion) was published in April, 1788. Forster's Boa ccBsintosa stands 

 as a nomen nudum in his Brodromus, p. 89 (1786) ; he did not 

 describe it until 1789 (as Jbactylis : Comm. Goett. ix. 22). There 

 is no ground for the doubt expressed by Hooker (Z. c.) as to the 

 identity of Forster's plant : Steudel, who calls it B. Forsteri ( Gra- 

 viince, p. 260: 1854) cites Forster's name as a synonym without 

 hesitation, and we have in the National Herbarium a specimen from 

 Forster so named. 



In nos. 6-7 of the Bulletin Mr. W. B. Tun-ill summarizes the 

 " Botanical Results of Swedish South American and Antarctic Expe- 

 ditions," and there is an "abridged translation of the more important 

 ]jarts" of Mr. W. E. Hart's history of the Botanic Gardens of 

 Pamplemousses, Mauritius. In no. 8 Mr. Sprague has a monograpli 

 of the Bignoniaceous genera Dolichandrone and Marhhamia, to 

 which attention was called by Seemann (who named the genera) in 

 the early volumes of this Journal (1863-70). 



Mr. W. Wilson, of Honolulu, has brought together in a pamphlet 

 all that is known of Bavid Douglas at Hawaii (Thrum, Honolulu, 

 price I dollar). It does not add materially to oiu- knowledge, but 



