l8 9i-] Notes and News. 189 



Station 

 a great 



In the third annual report of the Agricultural Experiment 

 of West Virginia, the botanist, Dr. C. F. Millspaugh, speaks of 

 variety of subjects, chiefly by way of instructing his constituency as to 

 the noxious and useful plants of their flora. 



Dr. Lucien M. Underwood spent several months of the past win- 

 ter in collecting in Florida and Cuba for the Department of Agricul- 

 ture. He brought back not only a considerable collection of Phane- 

 rogams, but also a large number of Hepaticae and Mosses. 



Dr. E. Koehne, of Friedenau, well known as the editor of Just's 



Jahresberichte, and for his work upon the Lythraceae and other orders, 



has been invested with the title "Professor" — a title of more difficult 



acquisition, and hence more honorable, in Germany than in this 



country. 



The poisoning of plants having proved ineffectual has been entirely 

 abandoned at the Gray Herbarium. The tightness of cases and the 

 handling of the sheets are relied upon to preserve the specimens. Any 

 which become invested may be treated to a stay in CS 2 vapor, or some 

 other insecticide. 



In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club | May), Messrs. Ander- 

 son and Kelsey describe some new algae from Montana; Mr. Murray 

 describes a new Myriophyllum from Michigan and calls it M. Far- 

 wellii from its discoverer; and Dr. Porter characterizes a new Liatris 

 from North Carolina, to be known as L. Helleri. The Liatris is from 

 the top of Blowing Rock Mt., Watauga Co. 



In his notes on the histology of Polysiphonia fastigiata (Jour. Bot. 

 May), Professor R. J. H. Gibson concludes that protoplasmic contin- 

 uity is maintained only in young cells, and that the delicate strands 

 which appear on both sides of the "plug'' in older cells represent 

 simply a delicate fringe arising from the margin of the plug itself and 

 quite independent of the protoplasmic contents of the canal. 



Professor Conway MacMillan, in Amer. Nat. (Feb.i, gives an in- 

 teresting table showing the comparative distribution southward of 

 certain distinctly boreal genera of phanerogams by the Rocky and 

 Appalachian mountain systems. The conclusion drawn is that the 

 loftier mountain ranges have caused the extension southward of a cor- 

 respondingly larger number of species. The table, as prepared, shows 

 that twice as many species of northern genera have come southward 

 along the twice as lofty Rocky Mountains as along the Appalachians. 



M.Pierre Via la describes in the Revut generate de Botanique for 

 April a disease of the vine which has caused considerable loss to the 

 nurserymen in the central and southwestern parts of France during 

 the past three years. The malady attacks the grafts and prevents the 

 union of the stock and scion, which are usually kept for some time in 

 ind in order to retard the growth of the buds until the proper season, 

 kclerotinia Fuckeliana is the cause of the trouble, and it seems to be 

 transmitted from year to year in the sand. A thorough drying of this 

 >n the sun before using seems fatal to the spores and a preventive of 

 the disease. 



