BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 239 



The awakening of the Kew Bulletin after its usual period of 

 hybernation enables us to give a list of the dates of publication of 

 the numbers which purport to have been issued in 1897, so far as 

 dates are supplied by the Stationery Office stamp. Unfortunately 

 even these cannot be altogether relied on ; the number for December 

 last and that for "January & February" are dated on the first page 

 " 3/98," but we believe they did not appear until May. 



Date on wrapper and front page. Stationery Office date. 



January . . . January. 



Feb. & March . . August. 



April .... August. 



May & June . . . September. 



July .... August. 



Aug. & September . . September. 



October .... September. 



November . . . September. 



December . . . March, 1898. 

 From this it appears that during the twelve months only one number 

 has been pubUshed during the month which appears on both wrapper 

 and first page as the date of publication ! A further eccentricity is 

 shown in the dates of the Appendices for 1898 : the first of these 

 bears the Stationery Office date "10/97," the second, "1/98." 

 We note that Punch criticizes with some severity the statistics 

 published in the Bulletin — " an official publication promulgated for 

 the benefit of the few, not the many" — as to the number of visitors 

 to the Gardens, and appeals to Dr. Dyer — "an acknowledged 

 apostle of culture, especially Haughty-culture" — for an explanation. 



Prof. Saccardo's Sylloge Fungorum has received an important 

 addition in the first instalment (pp. 624) of an "Index universalis 

 et locupletissimus nominum plantarum hospitum specierumque 

 omnium fungorum has in colentum quae usque ad finem 1897 

 excerpsit P. Sydow" (Berlin: Borntraeger). 



In a paper on "A Study of the Phyto-Plankton of the Atlantic," 

 read before the Royal Society on May 12, Messrs. George Murray 

 and V. H. Blackman recorded their observations on a year's work in 

 collecting phyto-plankton along a track from the Channel to Panama 

 carried out by Captains Milner and Rudge, and also during one 

 voyage to Brazil by Captain Tindall. They also gave the results of 

 their own observations on living material at sea. The material was 

 obtained by the pumping method. One of the objects of their work 

 was to determine, if possible, the nature of the Coccospheres and 

 Rhabdospheres. They describe the minute structure of the cal- 

 careous plates or coccoliths and rhabdoliths, and record the ex- 

 istence in the Coccospheres of a single central green chromatophore, 

 separating into two on the division of the cell. They regard Cocco- 

 sphcBvacecE as a group of Unicellular Alg^e, and they define the group, 

 the limits of the genera and species. The Coccospheres and Rhabdo- 

 spheres from the surface are compared with those of the deep-sea 

 deposits and their identity established. They are also compared with 

 geological coccoliths and rhabdoliths from various beds, and many 



