i895. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 301 



there, at University College, at South Kensington, at the Zoological 

 Gardens, and at some of the medical school laboratories, a few private 

 investigators are given opportunity by the kindness of those in charge. 

 But there is no place where a graduate may go as a right ; there is no 

 convenience of libraries or of laboratories. For this reason alone every 

 scientific man in London, in season and out of season, should press 

 for a central, working university. 



Catalogue of Medical Literature. 



The sixteenth and last volume of that colossal catalogue, the 

 " Index Catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Office of the United 

 States Army " has just been published. This work, the best of its 

 kind extant, is practically a complete index to medical literature, and 

 contains a great number of works more or less connected with the 

 other natural sciences. The library contains, says Science, 116,847 

 books and 191,598 pamphlets. The present volume deals with 12,759 

 authors' titles, representing 4,857 works and 11,613 pamphlets. We 

 doubt if so large a collection of medical works exists elsewhere, and it 

 speaks well for the United States Government that a comparativel}' 

 young library, as compared with the libraries of the Old World, 

 should be in such perfect condition. The library has increased at 

 such a pace that no less than five new volumes are needed to record 

 the accessions since the work began, and these will immediately be 

 prepared. This sixteenth is the last volume that will be issued under 

 the personal supervision of Dr. John S. Billings, and we offer our 

 hearty congratulations to him and to his staff on the completion of so 

 gigantic a monument and so valuable a book. 



Bibliography of American Alg.e. 



The number of papers on marine algae, especially those dealing 

 with the systematic branch of the subject, increases so rapidly that 

 it is extremely difficult for students to avoid missing some important 

 paper, published, as is so often the case, in some rather inaccessible 

 periodical. This difficulty is, perhaps, especially felt when it is 

 desired to study the alga; of some particular part of the world, 

 and the publication of a complete list of the literature dealing with 

 certain areas is much to be desired. 



Such a list of the literature of American Algas has lately been 

 compiled by Miss Josephine E. Tilden, and published as part xxiii. of 

 the Minnesota Botanical Studies. It includes the titles of all papers in 

 any way referring to algae, marine or fresh-water, which occur in 

 America. The geographical limit is wide, and includes, besides 

 North and South America, the West Indies, Galapagos Islands, and 

 even Tristan d'Acunha and Inaccessible Island. We venture to think 

 that this range is too wide, and that such oceanic islands as the two 

 last-mentioned should not be included in a list of papers supposed to be 



