199 
Mr. L. Lewron Bratn.—We learn with regret that Mr. L. 
Lewton Brain died at Kuala Lampur on June 24th of heart 
failure after an attack of malaria. Mr. Lewton Brain was 
educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and was subsequently 
appointed Junior Demonstrator of Botany in the University. In 
1903 he was appointed Mycologist and Lecturer in Agriculture to 
the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies (K.B. 
1903, 30), and later held the post of Assistant Director in the 
Division of Physiology and Pathology in the experiment station of 
the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. When the post of 
Director of Agriculture in the Federated Malay States fell vacant 
in 1910, Mr. Lewton Brain was appointed to fill the position 
(K.B. 1910, 253), and on the abolition of this post last year he 
was appointed Technical Adviser in Agriculture to the Govern- 
ment of the Federated Malay States (K.B. 1922, 94). During the 
eleven years of his tenure of the Directorship the Agricultural 
Department of the Federated Malay States has been reorganised 
and greatly strengthened and is now one of the best equipped 
Agricultural Departments in the Colonies. 
The Chinese Form of Cornus Kousa.—The Chinese form of 
this cornel, which was introduced from Western China in 1907, 
has flowered very beautifully this year at Kew and promises 
to be one of the best and most attractive of the new shrubs from 
that country. The species has, of course, long been known in 
gardens, but previous to the introduction of the Chinese plants, 
all those in cultivation were of Japanese origin. The floral 
beauty of Cornus Kousa is due solely to its bracts, of which four 
subtend the true flowers—small and inconspicuous—clustered 
in a head 3 inch wide. The bracts are ovate-lanceolate, slender- 
pointed, and in the Chinese plants the largest of them are 
2 to 3 inches long and 1 to 14 inches wide, creamy white, suf 
with pink before they fade. On the Japanese plants previously 
in cultivation the floral bracts are eet and capes ee 
judging by specimens preserved in the Herbarium at Kew the 
e retoety i: exist gies forms of this species with bracts 
as large as those of Wilson’s plants, although they have not 
been introduced. The garden value of the species 1s enhanced 
by the length of time the bracts remain in good condition; this 
year, in spite of the heat and drought in May and early June 
they were in beauty five or six weeks. Mr. Wilson found it as 
a shrub and as a small tree varying from 15 to 30 feet in height. 
It can be increased by cuttings, and in favourable seasons good 
seed no doubt will ripen. A figure of a Japanese form of Cornus 
Kousa appeared in the Kew Bulletin for 1915, page 17 Jf +e 
The Big Tree of Tule.—Unless the comparatively few regions 
of the globe as yet botanically unexplored have some unsuspected 
