AEWS. 
PROFESSOR JOHN M, COULTER, after an absence of nine months, noe of 
which was spent in Europe, has returned to his duties at the University of 
Chicago. 
CHARLES L, POLLARD has left the U. S. National Museum to become a 
member of the scientific staff of the G. & C. Merriam Company, a publish- 
ing house of Springfield, Mass. His relation to Zhe Plant World remains 
unchanged. : 
NATURE for November 5 gives an account of the eighty-sixth meeting of 
the Swiss Association for the Natural Sciences at Locarno. Mr. E. Fischet 
of Berne read an interesting paper on the origin of species, especially as 
illustrated by the Uredineae. 
T we announce that the December number of the /ournal 
of Applied Microscopy and Laboratory Methods, established by the Bausch : 
Lomb Optical Co. in January 1898, will terminate its existence. The. Journa 
has been of much service to biologists in disseminating information as to 
methods and equipment of laboratories. 
AMONG THE papers of botanical interest at the Cassel meeting of the 
German Association for the Advancement of Science and Medicine may be 
mentioned Professor Drude’s account of his experiments on mutation, " 
which he gives results differing from those of DeVries. He thinks there i8 
no sharp line between variation and mutation. 
WITH ITS SECOND VOLUME the Forest Quarterly becomes an independent 
journal, being published privately under the direction of a board of editors, 
with Professor Fernow as editor-in-chief. The board well represents the 
profession of forestry and includes men from the various centers of profes- 
sional forestry work. The journal deserves the support of all those interested 
in this great and growing subject. : 
Dr. J. N. RosE, of the National Museum, returned last fall from hls 
fourth journey to Mexico, having made an unusually large collection of plants, 
comprising over 1500 distinct numbers. 
He also sent to Washington more 
than 200 living plants, 
mostly Crassulaceae, probably representing the richest 
collection of such plants ever sent from Mexico, The type locality of nearly 
every species of north Mexico was visited, and living material was obtained 
from most of them, 
THE new way of extractin 
Charles H. Herty, 
resulting in a com 
§ turpentine, introduced two years ago by te 
working under the direction of the Bureau of Forestry, is 
plete change of methods by turpentine operators all overt 
78 [JANUARY 
