1893. . NOTES AND COMMENTS. veal 
nationale des Sciences naturelles et mathématiques de Cherbourg (vol. xxviii., 
1892). These Algz were collected so long ago as 1815-29 by Peter 
Schousboe, Danish Consul at Morocco, and a part of them were 
bought by the King of Denmark, who placed them in the Botanic 
Garden of Copenhagen. The rest, together with a herbarium of 
Phanerogams, came into the hands of M. E. Cosson, and the late M. 
Thuret undertook and began the working out of the Alge. He 
did not live to complete his labour, but sets were distributed 
by M. Kralik, under the name of Alge Schousbeanae, and the 
British Museum possesses a very excellent one. M. Bornet has 
set to work on the complete series in Herb. Thuret, and the result is 
the admirable treatise just issued. The numerous phycologists who 
have found trouble in dealing with the Alge Schousbwanae will be able 
to appreciate this authoritative publication, and especially the 
valuable critical notes on the species, as excellent and useful as any 
systematic work yet done by the great French botanist. A good 
deal of it will have particular interest to those who study seriously 
the distribution of our Channel Algez. 
Mr. James Ellis Humphrey, at present attached to the Agri- 
cultural Station at Amherst, Mass., is about to visit Jamaica for the 
purpose of working specially at the Alge of that island. He intends 
to pay attention to the development of the multinucleate forms and 
in so rich a field is sure to meet with rewards. 
RECENT PROGRESS IN THE STUDY OF FUNGI. 
AMONG new mycological literature, the Vegetable Wasps and Plant 
Worms, by M. C. Cooke, furnishes an account of the Fungi that prey 
upon insects. His book is based on the privately-printed Insect Bases 
of Fungoid Parasites, by G. R. Gray (1858). Dr. Cooke brings it up 
to date in his own way, which is not remarkable for severe accuracy, 
but the result is a guide, at all events, to the literature of the subject. 
Messrs. Ellis & Everhart’s North American Pyvenomycetes has at 
last appeared and in a ponderous form. It is an excellent piece of 
work, and, so far as we have tested it, errs only in the references not 
being sufficiently exhaustive—especially the earlier historical 
references, if these may be so distinguished from the more modern. 
Mr. Massee, whose activity in book production threatens Dr. 
Cooke’s supremacy in this respect, has produced the first volume of 
his British Fungus Flora (Bell & Sons). Mixed with much that is both 
acutely and shrewdly critical, there is considerable credulity in the 
matter of taking references and statements for granted as correct. 
This kind of credulity may be beautiful as a matter of sentiment, and 
convenient in cases of haste, but it makes a vast difference to the 
value of a book. 
An interesting and very comprehensive book on the truffle, by 
M. A. Chatin (‘‘La Truffe,” Bailliére et Fils, Paris), has just been 
