86 THE JOIR-NAL OT BOTANY 



Department of Botany and an account of them was published in 1913 

 as a British Museum Catalogue. More than a thousand species and 

 varieties are enumerated, and of these twenty per cent, are new, 

 including nine new genera : speaking botanically this I'epresents the 

 most productive piece of the Talbots' w^ork. In 1911 they accom- 

 panied Miss Olive Macleod on an expedition to Lake Chad and the 

 Bjrnu district, passing through part of the North Cameroons and 

 French Ubangi ; a list of the plants collected on this journey forms 

 an Appendix to Miss Macleod's Chiefs and Cities of Central Africa. 

 Nince 1912 Mr. Talbot's work has lain in the Eket and Degema 

 districts, which are nearer the coast and have a less varied and 

 botanicall}^ interesting vegetation than that of the Oban Highlands. 

 Nevertheless the work of collecting was continued assiduously, and 

 many new or otherwise interesting specimens reached the Museum 

 from time to time. AVhen Mrs. Talbot bade us good-bye to return 

 once more to Nigeria last summer, she was full of enthusiasm and 

 looking forward to the possibility of being able at some time to 

 revisit the Oban district. In her last letter to me, she writes, in 

 October, " we have a scheme for carrying out your wishes with regard 

 to Oban, which we think could possibly be worked next tour; however 

 .we can talk that over with you when we come back, if we are spared 

 to do so." Mrs. Talbot was not merely a collector but was keenly 

 interested in the plants, and her letters are full of useful notes. She 

 was specially interested in the genus Napoleona, and had made careful 

 drawings of the flowers of the various forms with a view to a mono- 

 graph which Mr. E. Gr. Baker was preparing, based largely on 

 Mrs. Talbot's specimens and sketches. — A. B. R. 



Dr. Sarah M. Baker and Miss Maude H. Bohling (afterwards 

 Blandford) have made a special study of the peculiar forms of 

 EucaceseC'On the Brown Seaweeds of the Salt Marsh " in Journ. 

 Linn. Soc. xliii. 1916, pp. 325-380, 3 pis. & figs.) which occur 

 conspicuously on some salt-marshes, their relation to recognized 

 svstematic species, and the effect of the physical conditions of the 

 marsh upon the morphology of tlie plants. Of our common littoral 

 Fucaceae — (1) Helvetia canaliculata, (2) Fucus spiralis, (3) Asco- 

 phyllum nodosum, (4) Himanthalia lorea, (5) Fucus vesicidosus, 

 (H) F. serratus, (7) F. ceranoides—\t is to numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 

 tJiat the marsh forms are .traced by the authors. These ecological 

 forms have hitherto been neglected or misunderstood by previous 

 writers. They are derived from the fixed known saxicolous plant in 

 two ways, either by direct vegetative budding, or by the modification 

 of young plants germinating upon a salt-marsh. Each individual 

 species undergoes a series of striking morphological modifications in 

 tlie transition from rock to s:ilt-marsh, and the adaptational varieties 

 so produced are termed ' ecads,' and are persistent through many 

 vegetative generations. The marsh ecads of the five species, being all 

 of the same general type, are grouped together under a " megecad 

 liniicnlay This then includes all the marsh-dwelling Fucoids as 

 distinguished from those of saxicolous habit. The characteristics 

 -of the megecad limicola are briefly : — (I) Vegetative Reproduction, 



