WESTERN AMERICAN BIRCHES, by B. T. Butler. 
This paper in the Torrey Bulletin for August, 1909 is the 
result of about five days’ field work at Bigfork, Montana, or 
portions of five days. The writer has had charge of the botan- 
ical work at the Biological station of the State University there 
for the last two years, and Mr. Butler was there a short time 
and did a little botanical work, being out with the writer on 
three occasions, once at Rost lake, once at Yellow Bay, and at 
various forms of B. glandulosa, all intergrading and growing 
under the same ecological conditions. Out of this material 
he makes two new species which have no standing whatever 
valli as B. obovata, this also is a form of the above. Butler’s 
Species amount simply to a description of individual plants to 
which he gives new names and from which I also gathered ma- 
Mr. Butler then takes up B. microphylla describing as spe- 
cies some of the different forms, such as B. fontinalis ‘Sargent, 
it often is thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. It al- 
Ways grows in clumps. 
Mr. Butler then takes up the paper birches and recog- 
nizes every name ever applied to them but one as distinct spe- — 
cies. Among the forms of B. alba are B. Alaskana Sargent and © 
B. papyrifera Marsh, which he recognizes as separate species 
and distinct from alba though they are only forms. ee: 
tula alba var. pendula (Roth Ten. FI. Germ, as species). 
