BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 503 



identical. But it is an excellent list, and the little volume, which 

 costs only 3 marks, is worth obtaining on its account alone. ' 



Messrs. Linton have sent out the fourth fascicle of their Set of 

 British Hieracia. This surpasses each of its predecessors in the 

 number of endemic forms it contains, there being sixteen in all 

 VIZ. eleven species and five varieties. These are :— £Z. qracilenium • 

 H. nigrescens,Yi\,v. gracUifoliiim ; H. cerinthiforme ; H.'flocculosum ; 

 H. Lima; H. carenorum ; H. Schmidtii, var. devoniense ; H. cale- 

 donicum; H. nitidum ; H. Pictorum; H. pollijiarium ; H. polli- 

 narium, var. plaU/phijUitm ; H. ruhiglnosum ; H. cambricum; H 

 Orarium, var. fiUvum ; H. rigidum, var. serpentinum. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on Nov. 3rd Prof H 

 Marshall Ward read a joint paper by Miss Dale and himself on 

 Craterostigma pumilum, which had been brought from Somaliland 

 by Mrs. Lort Phillips. As it had flowered in the Cambridge Botanic 

 Grarden during the past summer, and ripe capsules and seeds were 

 obtained, a complete description was possible. The authors have 

 examined the anatomy of the plant in detail, and they record some 

 interesting points concerning the red colouring-matter of the roots 

 which occurs as amorphous red granules on the cell- walls, and Hnint^ 

 the large intercellular space of the cortex. Its reactions are unlike 

 those of any other pigment with which the authors have compared 

 it : it IS not carotin, and cannot be explained as a reserve-material 

 or as a colour-screen, and they regard it as an excretion. That 

 portion of the paper which dealt with the systematic position of 

 Craterostigma showed that the authors were not on familiar ground; 

 and Prof. Ward's naive account of the steps which he took to 

 ascertain this position caused some amusement to systeraatists who 

 were present. 



We have so often felt it necessary to call attention to the irre- 

 gularity of the issue of the Kew Bidletin that it is only fair that we 

 should note that the much-needed reform in this matter has taken 

 place — whether on account of our remonstrances we do not know, 

 nor is it needful to enquire. The November number contains a 

 further instalment of the " Diagnoses Africans," in which we note 

 a correction of certain previously-published names which prove to 

 be synonyms: the Bidletin has done a good deal in this way of 

 encumbering nomenclature. A new Ceropegia from Welwitsch's 

 collections is described ; we think it would have been courteous to 

 have left this to Mr. Hiern, a further instalment of whose Catalogue 

 of Welwitsch's African collections will be published this month. "^ It 

 will bring the enumeration down to the end of Scrophnlariacea. 



A GOOD example of ''a botanical reader for children" will be 

 found in Mrs. Ahce Merritt Davidson's California Plants in their 

 Homes (Los Angeles : Baumgardt & Co., 1898; 8vo, pp. 216), with 

 which is bound a " supplement for the use of teachers," extending 

 to 133 pages. It is somewhat in the style of Asa Gray's How Plants 

 "Grow, but is more comprehensive, and is written in a simple style 

 which children can readily follow and understand. The headings 

 of the chapters are sometimes rather quaint — " Plants that know 



