40 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 



'^ WillougJibeia Hook. f. spbalm. = Williujhheia Roxb." But these 

 are trifles ; and we heartily congratulate Sir Joseph Hooker on 

 having brought his work to a satisfactory conclusion. We under- 

 stand that Sir Joseph will undertake the completion of Dr. Trimen's 

 Flora of Ceylon ; the work could not be in abler hands. 



The last part (November, 1897) of the Transactions of the Natural 

 Historu Society of Glasgow contains biographies of Prof. Thomas 

 King (with portrait) and David Eobertson, of whom brief notices 

 have appeared in this Journal. The contents of the part are largely 

 botanical, and include papers on Coll and Tiree plants, by Mr. 

 Symers M. Macvicar, and on the Algre of Lamlash Bay, by David 

 Robertson ; Notes from Galloway by Mr. James M' Andrew, and on 

 the Shape of Leaves by Mr. G. F. Scott Elliot. Mr. G. W. Dod, 

 in an interesting paper on " The Constancy of the Bee," controverts 

 from personal observation the view put forward by some naturalists 

 that bees remain constant to one species of plant during a single 

 excursion. 



Botanists who are working at the African Flora received a 

 Vv'elcome, if unexpected, Christmas-box in the shape of the long- 

 promised instalment of the Flora of Tropical Africa. We hope to 

 notice this resumption of a very important work in our next issue. 

 The first part of vol. vii. of the Flora Capensis has also just been 

 issued. 



We learn with much satisfaction that our valued contributor 

 Mr. Alfred Fryer has been elected an Associate of the Linnean 

 Society. 



Mr. John Humphreys, F.L.S., publishes in the Bromsgrove 

 Weekly Messenger for Dec. 11, 1897, a " Flora of Hartlebury Com- 

 mon," Worcestershire, and notes on the flora of the Salwarpe and 

 Droit wich Canal. 



The Annals of Botany (December) contains a not very pleasing 

 portrait of the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, with a short appreciation by 

 Dr. Dyer, who says, " The task is never an easy one for those of 

 one generation in science to express in a few words the precise 

 nature of the debt which they owe to their predecessors." Mr. J. 

 Lloyd Williams has a paper on the motility of the antherozoids in 

 Dictyota and Tao7iia, his observations concerning which were first 

 announced in this Journal last year (p. 361). 



The first volume of a pretty Botanisches Bilderhnch filr Jung 

 und Alt, by Franz Bley, has just been published by Gustav Schmidt, 

 of Berlin. It contains twenty-four plates, each with nine separate 

 figures ; these, although small, are mostly carefully executed and 

 coloured, and convey an accurate notion of the plant. This volume 

 contains the species most likely to be met with in the first half of 

 the year ; the figures are not confined to phanerogams, but include 

 some of the commoner fungi. The next publisher who is projecting 

 a popular book on British wild flowers might do worse than arrange 

 for the reproduction of these figures, many of which are, of course, 

 plants common to the two countries. The descriptive text, by W. 

 Berdrow, seems carefully done. The price of the book is 6 marks. 



