1866. | Botany and Vegetable Physiology. 571 
miles from Syracuse and within a few miles from Onondago. A 
dried specimen was immediately sent to Dr. Asa Gray by the 
fortunate discoverer. 
Messrs. Sullivant and Lesquereux, well known as the ablest 
Cryptogamic Botanists in the United States, have issued a second 
and greatly enlarged edition of their ‘Musci Boreali Americani, 
sive Specimina Exsiccata Muscorum in Americe Republicis 
Federatis detectorum’ (the mosses of North America, or dried 
specimens of mosses detected in the Federal Republic of America). 
This edition is not a mere reproduction of the first, for whilst 
that contained a little over 400 species or marked varieties, this 
contains 536. The novelties in the second edition are partly from 
California, and contributed mainly by the zealous Bolander, also 
from the Rocky Mountains by Mr. EK. Hall, and there are many 
new eastern species which have been detected by Messrs. James, 
Peck, Austin, Clinton, and Ingraham, as well as by Lesquereux 
himself. The price of the set is thirty-five dollars, or 77. Hach 
copy is accompanied by an octavo pamphlet of 96 pages, being a 
- representation, in convenient printed form, of all the tickets 
characteristic of the new species, and an index. Applicants will 
address, M. Leo Lesquereux, Columbus, Ohio. 
In a letter, dated March 26, 1866, which is published in the 
May number of ‘Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Art,’ 
Professor Brewer gives some interesting facts as to the occurrence 
of living plants in the hot and saline waters of California. He 
says :—‘“'The so-called Geysers in Pluton Creek, a branch of the 
Russian river, lying at an altitude of 1,700 feet above the sea, 
consist of numerous steam vents and hot springs of various 
temperatures, the hottest observed being 97° Centigrade, or about 
207° Fahr. In these warm mineral waters low forms of vegetation 
oceur, consisting of unicellular plants and filamentous Conferve of 
a bright. green colour. They were most abundant in waters of the 
temperature of 52° to 60° Centigrade, or 125° to 140° Fahr. The 
highest temperature noted in which the plants were growing was 
93° Centigrade, or about 200° Fahr. The plants were unicellular 
in the hottest springs, and filamentous in springs of a lower 
temperature. These observations were made in November, 1861, 
and the facts were communicated, the followmg winter, to the 
California Academy of Natural Sciences.” As a remarkable 
example of tenacity of life amongst the higher plants, Lewisida 
vedivia is mentioned, a Portulacaceous plant, large flowered and 
fleshy, growing in British Columbia, Oregon, and California. 
Specimens of this plant will grow, although they have been dried 
and in the herbarium for two or three years,and indeed the samples 
are often troublesome from sprouting whilst between the papers. 
One species collected by Dr. Lyall, of the British navy, was 
VOL. III. 2Q 
