4i8 NATURAL SCIENCE. dec. 



lacunar development which appears in such various forms and 

 positions in cortical tissues of other Lycopodinous plants. 



All these considerations, the author remarks, serve to draw the 

 Lycopodinous plants of the present and past more closely together as 

 a natural family, while it is interesting to note that the lines of 

 similarity " do not focus themselves specially between any twO' 

 genera, but are such as to suggest complex cross-relationship between 

 the several representatives of this very natural series." 



B. H. Halsted has been investigating {Bull. Torrey Botanical' 

 Club, October) a disease which has, in the last two or three years,, 

 become very common among hot-house Pelargoniums in the United 

 States. The leaves lose their healthy green colour, and become 

 speckled or blotched with yellow, while corky ridges are found on the 

 stem and petioles, and the whole plant may become sick, stunted, 

 and useless. The usual appearance on the blades is that of numerous 

 specks, which seem to be supercharged with water, giving the part 

 a clear amber look when held up to the light. A similar appearance, 

 in Carnation leaves, previously studied, was known to be due to micro- 

 organisms, but, on investigation, no trace of bacteria or infection by 

 inoculation could be found in the Pelargonium, and it was concluded 

 that the plants were suffering from a dropsical affection due to excess 

 of water and insufficient light. Professor Atkinson has described a 

 similar trouble which he calls CEdema of the Tomato. The remedy 

 would seem to be a cooler, drier soil and increased light for the aerial 

 parts wherever possible. 



An explanation of the want of accord in the results of estimation, 

 by methods hitherto used, of theobromin and caffein in specimens of 

 tea and coffee, preparations of cacao and cola nuts, is supplied by 

 some recent Avork by A. Hilger and other chemists, on the cola nut 

 and seeds of the cacao. In both of these there exists a nitrogenous 

 glucoside, from which caffein or theobromin respectively, besides 

 other compounds, are produced by action of a diastatic ferment, also 

 present in the seeds. The authors succeeded in isolating both the 

 glucoside and the ferment. To get trustworthy results in the estima- 

 tion of theobromin or caffein, the glucoside must be completely split 

 up before these bodies are isolated. In the cacao it is broken up into 

 theobromin, dextrose and a non-nitrogenous body, cacaoroth, 

 while with the cola nut an analogous reaction obtains, caffein and 

 kolaroth being formed. For details, the reader is referred to the 

 Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fiiy djfentliclic Gesnndheitspjlege, vol. xxv., pt. 3. 



In the Annals of Botany Mr. E. H. Acton gives the result of 

 an analysis of wheat grain grown near Canterbury nearly thirty years 

 ago, and threshed in 1S92, and compares it with some of last year's 



