3 2 The Botanical (iazctte. [January, 



Just how this elimination of silica is accomplished Mr. Weed does not 

 >ay, and the matter really lies outside his province. Algse are the 

 chief agents in this work, and in the cooler waters at some distance 

 from the springs mosses also assist. Cladothrix gypsophila, Masti- 

 gonema thermale, Leptothrix laminosa, and Leptothrix sp.? are the 

 chief filamentous forms found growing in the hot waters. Various 



diatoms, Denticula valida in particular, eliminate silica from the tepid 

 waters of the marshes about the Hot Springs, and their dead tests 

 make up the bulk of the ooze which forms the soil of these marshes. 

 Ihe moss found in the warm waters was Hypnum aduncum var. 

 gracilescens. The memoir is an interesting contribution to the 

 knowledge of vegetation as a geological agent. 



-Minor Notices. 



With the appearance of Part V, devoted to Ptendophytes, Pro- 

 fessor John Macoun's Catalogue of vascular Canadian Plants has been 

 completed. It has been very handsomely done and the painstaking 

 care so evident through it all has made it a mine of information con- 

 cerning the Canadian flora. The present part brings up the generic 

 numbers to 764, the specific to 3,054. A large appendix brings together 

 additions and corrections to Parts [-IV, the results of all monographic 

 work done since the beginning of the catalogue being included. It is 

 promised that Part VI, soon to appear, will include Characere, Musci, 

 and Hepaticoe, about 1,000 species in all. The part is rounded out by 

 a complete index to all the parts, and the five will make a very com- 

 plete and compact volume. 



Along with the preceding comes a list of Canadian Hepatic^, by 

 Wm. Hy. Pearson, published in the same style, and containing 12 full 



page plates, 



OPEN LETTERS, 



The word " Biology." 



An open Jetter from a " Prominent Zoologist " brings a breath of 

 • Bum* into the October Gazette. In it, an original and characteristi- 

 cally unsearchable defence is proposed for the current etvmological 

 piracv /// re the word "biology." It is probablv the same "'prominent 

 zoologist —if one may judge by kinship of orthographic recklessness 

 —who presents editorially, in the Nov. American Naturalist a 

 similar sin against rational use of terminology. The argument perpe- 

 trated by the G \zkt-it. letter and perpetrated in the Naturalist edi- 

 torial is as follows: " Zoologists were the first to studv life- therefore 

 the\ have a prior right to the word biology.** The truly "biological" 



