280 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. 



Prof. J. Wiesner sends from Vienna a i^amphlet on " The 

 necessity of instruction in Natural History in the study of Medicine." 

 It is a vigorous protest against the threatened "reform" of the 

 medical curriculum in the Austrian universities, involving the 

 removal therefrom of the course of pure science so generally 

 insisted upon in all modern schools. 



Prof. E. L. Greene, who is now Professor of Botany in the 

 Catholic University of America, at Washington, has resumed the 

 publication of Pittonia, the second volume of which was concluded 

 in 1892. The first part of the third volume contains papers on the 

 Nomenclature of the Fuller's Teasel; on Sihara, a proposed new 

 genus of Crucifer?e (to include six species, previously placed in 

 Arahis, Canlamhic, Sisi/mbriuiii, and Nasturtium); on Lcoiyloisia, n 

 genus proposed for three plants referred by Asa Gray to Navarretia ; 

 and on some Mexican Eupatoriacea, with descriptions of several 

 new species in various orders. Erythea, of which Prof. Greene was 

 the moving spirit, seems to have come to an end, no number having 

 appeared since December last. 



The May part of the Icones Plantarum contains some interesting 

 novelties. The new genera described and figured are Creafjhiella 

 Stapf (Melastomacete OxysporeaB), Humalopetalum Eolfe (Orchideae 

 Epidendreffi), Pteryniella Oliv. (ScrophularineEe Eupbrasieffi), Isano- 

 chloa Hook. f. (Graminete Andropogouefe), Littledalea Hemsl. 

 (Graminefe Festucere). Mr. N. E. Brown's genus Platykeleha, 

 established by him in the Bulletin of Miscellaneom Information iox 

 1895 (p. 250) on a plant collected by Baron in Madagascar, is 

 figured : this had been previously sent from Madagascar by Hilsen- 

 berg and Bojer ; Mr. Schlechter, when naming the British Museum 

 Asclepiads last year, at first proposed to found a genus upon it, but 

 subsequently decided to regard it as a Sarcostemma. 



Mr. E. p. Bicknell publishes in the Bulletin of the Torrey 

 Botanical Club a paper on the Sisyrinchiums of the Eastern United 

 States. Mr. Bicknell follows Mr. Watson in maintaining *S'. an- 

 gustifoliiua Miller as the name for the simple-stemmed American 

 plant, but appears to have overlooked Mr. Hemsley's paper in this 

 Journal for 1884 (pp. 108-110) in which this name was re-established. 

 He considers the S. Bernuulianum of American authors, not of 

 Linnaeus, as a distinct species, which he calls S. yraniinoides. By 

 a slip, however, the name where it first appears is printed '^ yram- 

 noides," and we are curious to know whether Dr. Britton's views as 

 to priority of place will induce him to insist on the retention of the 

 name in this, its earliest, form. Another new species is S. atlanticum. 



The new part (xxi.) of the Flora of British India is devoted to 

 the first instalment of Sir J. D. Hooker's important revision of the 

 Indian grasses. It extends to 224 pages, and brings the enume- 

 ration down to Aristida. 



