954 BOTANICAL NEWS. 
Botany,’ giving pleasant chit-chat of the most prominent wild flowers 
as they appear month after month. The author still clings to the 
Linnean system, holds Withering’s faults in greater veneration than the 
present generation of botanists, and makes here and there a few blun- 
ders ; but on the whole she has done her best, and her book will help 
to make botany popular in circles which could probably not be reached 
in any other way. Taking it for what it proposes to be, and not more, 
we should call it a well-executed little book. 
The Palm-tree. By S. Moody. With Illustrations by the Author. 
ondon: Nelson an 
Those who know how to use it will find in this little book a collection 
of notes on Palms worth having. We say advisedly, those who know 
how to use it, because in various instances these notes, derived from 
whatever books came to hand, are referred to the wrong plants. One- 
third of the whole is filled with theological botany, intended to illus- 
trate the Scriptural allusions to Palms. The plates, though their 
colours are somewhat conventional, are effective. The whole is ele- 
gantly got up. 
BOTANICAL NEWS. 
Prof. Asa Gray having made the munificent offer of his extensive Herbarium 
and Library to the Cambridge University, Massachusetts, upon condition that 
a suitable fire-proof building should be erected for their reception, a Boston 
banker has liberally come forward to end the cost of such a building, = 
vided others raise a fund to meet the current expenses of the establishmen 
There is reason to hope that a conditions vi will be Me that a Peer 
will thus be laid for a National American Herbarium, and Professor Gray be 
placed in a position to devote himself more fully to the completion of his great 
publications on the North American Flora. 
Dr. Ernest Stizengerber has just published in the 22nd volume of the * Nova 
Acta” “Critical Remarks on the Lecideacee with needle-shaped spores," illus- 
trated by two quarto plates. The paper having been prepared with care, will 
prove cres to lichenologists in this country. 
Mr. Dallachy is now Mero forthe Melbourne Gardens in Rockingham 
Bay in Eastern Australia, and Mr. Travers, of Christ Church, New Zealand, is 
about to proceed to the Chatham Islands for the purpose of exploring them 
botanically, his father —— — the expenses of the expedition. 
