174 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



and Hawaii." As a compilation of previous records for the areas 

 in question the work is good, a'tid will be decidedly useful. One 

 would like, however, to see such compilations treated from a more 

 critical standpoint, although such treatment obviously necessitates 

 great personal experience and knowledge of the plants dealt with. 

 The study of the subject would in this way be materially advanced 

 and the work would be of immeasurably greater value. There 

 appears to be an entire absence of critical observation from the 

 whole of the volume under review, and this seriously detracts 

 from its importance as an up-to-date record of the systematics of 

 the Myxophycea. To give one instance : both Phormidium unci- 

 natum and P. autumnale are fully described, with accompanying 

 references and distribution, although Jobs. Schmidt, and others, 

 have clearly shown that it is not possible to discriminate between 

 them. 



The illustrations will no doubt be a useful feature of the book, 

 but they are mostly copies of well-known figures by other authors. 

 One would have imagined that a work of this nature would have 

 given scope for many original drawings. 



The use of the term "plant" instead of "cell" for the single 

 cells of the Goccogonece, is not a very happy expression. The 

 author has also repeatedly used the name " De Toni " as a specific 

 authority when it should have been " Forti." 



The compilation has been well done, and there are singularly 

 few errors, but one's first impression on opening the book is 

 distinctly not a good one, as it suffers like so many American 

 publications from a lack of discrimination in the type. Specific 

 names, authors' names, and geographical areas are all in the same 

 type, and it is positively difficult to discover where one species 

 ends and another begins. This entails a great waste of time in 

 making use of the book for specific determinations. 



G. S. West. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on March 16th, Mrs. 

 D, H. Scott gave a lantern exhibition of new species of the fossil 

 genus Traquairia. She also exhibited the original diagram made 

 by Dr. W. Carruthers, who first described the genus at a meeting 

 of the British Association in 1872, in a paper entitled " Traquairia, 

 a Eadiolarian rhizopod from the Coal-Measures." Count Solms- 

 Laubach, Professors Schenk, Strassburger, and Zeiller considered 

 it comparable to the massulge or sporocarps of Azolla. Professor 

 Williamson (Phil. Trans. 1880) thought it the spore of a crypto- 

 gam. He found a group of three Tmquairice in a sporangium of 

 Lepidostrobus, and thought them three megaspores of a tetrad. 

 The true megaspores are, however, now well known. Mrs. Scott 

 defined Traquairia thus: — "Traquairia is a spherical organism, 

 consisting of two parts each surrounded by a sharply defined 

 membrane : an inner capsule, often containing spores, and an 

 outer part, which is surrounded by a thick gelatinous envelope. 



