THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 143 



Botany at the University. — Dr. A. J. Ewart, who has just 

 been appointed by the Council of the University of Melbourne to 

 the new chair of IBotany, will occupy that position in conjunction 

 with the post of Government Botanist for Victoria. Both the 

 University and the Government were anxious to secure a botanist 

 who would be of especial assistance in agricultural matters, and, 

 in recommending Dr. Ewart's appointment. Professor Marshall 

 Ward, of Cambridge, and Professor F. W. Oliver, of London, laid 

 stress upon the fact that his very extensive knowledge of physio- 

 logical botany placed him in a situation of peculiar advantage 

 as regards agricultural teaching. Professor Ewart was trained 

 at Liverpool University, and obtained an 185 1 Exhibition 

 scholarship for agricultural research. This he held for three 

 years, two of which were spent at the Leipzig Botanical 

 Institute, and one as a travelling student in Java, Ceylon, and 

 Singapore, in which places Professor Hillhouse, of Birmingham, 

 says that Dr. Ewart carried on research with brilliant success. 

 From March, 1902, to March, 1905, he was a tenant at Hurst Green 

 Farm, near Birmingham, carrying out commercial and experimental 

 farming operations on a small scale, in order to gain a practical 

 acquaintance with agriculture. The new professor has also had 

 considerable teaching experience ; five years' herbarium woi k in 

 Liverpool, three years as extension lecturer in the University 

 of Oxford, two years as Deputy Professor of Botany in 

 Birmingham University. Dr. Pfeffer, the distinguished Director 

 of the Botanical Institute in Leipzig, whose standard 

 work on " The Physiology of Plants " Dr. Ewart translated into 

 English for the Clarendon Press, says : — " It is also a special 

 pleasure to me to be able to state that Dr. Ewart, in virtue of 

 his critical spirit, his skill, knowledge, and iron industry, possesses 

 in the highest degree the power of successfully attacking and 

 solving the most difficult problems and researches." It has 

 been arranged that Dr. Ewart will devote half of his time to the 

 work of the Government Botanical Department, and half to that 

 of the University, and we need hardly add that the new pro- 

 fessor will be warmly welcomed by all who are interested in 

 botanical work in Victoria. 



Western Australian Pitcher Plant. — Some little time ago 

 I exhibited at a Club meeting some growing specimens of the 

 Dwarf Pitcher Plant, Cephalotus foUicularis (N.O. Saxifrageae), 

 found only in the vicinity of Albany, W.A. Several inquiries 

 having been made about the habits of this plant, I append 

 the following particulars. The plants grow in damp, swampy 

 ground, in small clumps of about a dozen pitchers in each. 

 As many as twenty such clusters were noticed on a piece 

 of ground only three yards square. Growing as they do 

 under the shelter of small shrubs on a slope, which keeps the 

 pitcher almost perpendicular, with the mouth uppermost, the 



