112 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 



of Nature should not be more fully utilised, his advice amounted to 

 ' Better let them alone ! ' " We find no record of this trait of the 

 Professor's character in the recently published Memorials. 



We have omitted to notice the Annual Report (the eighth), 

 issued by the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is no longer 

 marred by the extraneous and irrelevant matter which at one time 

 disfigured these handsome volumes. It is entirely occupied with 

 tlie botany of the Azores, including a special paper by M. Cardot 

 on the mosses (noticed on p. 415 of this Journal for 1897), and a 

 complete enumeration of the flora — the result of expeditions under- 

 taken in 1891 and 1896 by Prof. Trelease, Mr. C. S. Brown, and 

 of other collections made in the islands. The novelties are few 

 and unimportant, but the large number of plates (sixty-six in all), 

 mauy of them illustrating endemic and little-known species, give 

 the enumeration a special value. 



In The Naturalist for February, Mr. J. Larder gives a list of 

 Lincolnshire Mosses, " being part i. of Notes for a future Crypto- 

 gam ic Flora of Lincolnshire." 



British botanists will be glad to know that Lord de Tabley's 

 Flora of Cheshire is likely to be published. The MS. copy as left 

 by the author was practically complete, and Mr. Spencer Moore is 

 now looking through it, with a view to seeing the volume through 

 the press. 



A HANDSOME and weighty (5 lb. 2^ oz.) volume forms the first 

 instalment of a comprehensive work by Dr. A. T. de Rochebrune, 

 entitled " Toxicolotjie Africaine : etude botanique, historique, ethno- 

 graphique, chimique, physiologique, therapeutique, pharmacolo- 

 gique, posologique, &c." (Paris: Doin). It contains 935 pages and 

 3-45 figures, many of them reproductions from all kinds of places, 

 and extends from Raniuiculacea to Rosacece — the Rose alone occupies 

 more than two hundred pages. It is a reprint from the Bulletin of 

 the Societe d'Histoire Naturelle d'Autun — a fact which we think 

 should have been mentioned somewhere in the work itself. The 

 English extracts require revision. Mr. Bentham is represented as 

 having said of Hexaluhus: " This African genus is both remarkable: 

 for the transverse undulation and fods, of the petales especially 

 when the bad is near opening ; it is probably characteristic of 

 genus" (p. 435). 



The "November" number of the Kew Bulletin bears the 

 Stationery Office date of October, and was issued in February ; 

 the date at the foot of the first page of each number, on which we 

 have been accustomed to rely, cannot therefore be taken as that of 

 actual issue. In the interests of science we once more call upon 

 those responsible to render it possible to ascertain when each 

 number is published. On the present occasion the matter is of no 

 importance, as sixty out of the sixty-four pages are devoted to a 

 reprint of portions of the Report of the West India Royal Com- 

 mission, issued in the autumn of 1896 ; so that neither science nor 

 commerce can be said to have suffered from the delay of the 

 "November" Bulletin. 



