Oct. 30, 1879] 



NATURE 



631 



African Bamboo, the Sugar-Cane Disease, Substitutes for 

 Vegetable Ivory, and Paper Materials. 



As regards the plants under cultivation, it should be 

 stated that great pains are taken to name them con- 

 spicuously and correctly, a matter of extreme importance to 

 students, and one which every day engages the unwearied 

 attention of the staff at the Herbarium. Without almost 

 unlimited means the collection could scarcely be much 

 extended. The admission, however, of Mr. Peacock's 

 unequalled collection of succulent plants for a limited but 

 sufficiently extended period should not be passed without 

 notice. The proposal was a happy one, and the accept- 

 ance much to the credit of the authorities. The groups 

 of hardy economic plants and of those of a similar 

 character which require a higher temperature than our 

 country can offer arc of especial interest to the student. 

 The plants of peculiar botanical importance which have 

 flowered during the past year are duly recorded, while an 

 especial report, accompanied by a figure, is devoted to a 

 new tropical fodder-grass which grew and flowered under 

 store treatment. At Singapore, Adelaide, and elsewhere 

 the hopes conceived of it are very great, and seeds of it 

 have been widely distributed from Kew. Nor are matters 

 ■of cognate interest at home neglected. A notice is given 

 •of that form of the prickly comfrey which is likely to be a 

 valuable fodder plant in Great Britain and Ireland. It 

 seems to be a hybrid between Symphytum officinale and 

 S. asperrimum; we have seen it lately m great perfection 

 and in full usage, where it is greedily consumed by cattle, 

 which thrive upon it immensely, while they will not touch 

 the common comfrey. 



The ravages of insects amongst plants are of no less 

 interest than those which are produced by fungi. A very 

 small bug, for example, is highly detrimental to [the tea 

 plantations in India, and Mr. McLachlan has given a great 

 ■deal of valuable information on such subjects, information 

 of such importance that the want is sugge5ted of a con- 

 sulting entomologist, at the disposal of the different 

 Government offices, who should receive a retaining fee 

 in return for investigating and reporting upon the various 

 questions respecting which the residents in our yarious 

 British dependencies apply for information. 



At the commencement of the report there is a notice of 

 4he condition of the tropical fern house as regards the 

 decay of the rafters, which the late storm has too sadly 

 confirmed, and it is in consequence suggested that some 

 hard wood like teak or blue gum should be substituted. 

 The suggestion is one of great importance to all who are 

 interested in the sustentation of their stoves and conserva- 

 tories. Foreign deal is often dangerous. Every one who 

 has watched the progress of decay in imported wood as 

 used in railway construction, must have seen how soon 

 they become infested with such fungi as Lentinus lepideus, 

 Trametes pini, and Lenzites sepiaria, of course, from 

 spawn contained in the wood. But home-grown wood is 

 no less subject to decay from fungi. Where oak is 

 grown from old stools, the wood is apt to have a tint, 

 which, to persons well skilled in such matters is known as 

 foxy. Such wood would at once be rejected in our naval 

 yards, but we have seen a case in which it was used in 

 the construction of a range of hothouses, where the whole 

 in a few years was destroyed by Dadalea querJna; and 

 deal, whether of home or foreign growth, is soon infested 

 with Polyporus medulla pants, which is, we believe, a 

 condition of one of our commonest fungi. It is not 

 always possible to say whether any mycelium is present 

 in wood ; it is better, therefore, as Sir Joseph Hooker 

 suggests, to use some material less liable to decay. 



It remains only to notice the acquisitions to the 

 herbarium during the past year. One of the most im- 

 portant is a collection of fungi containing more than 

 10,000 species, a great portion of which are typical. That 

 Of Mr. Dazell is important, from its containing type 

 •pccimens of the Bombay flora. Messrs. Cosson, Miers, 



and Casimir De Candolle have sent collections of greater 

 or less magnitude and value, while the list of contributors 

 either in specimens or drawings occupies more than three 

 columns. The botanical publications prepared in connec- 

 tion with the work of the herbarium have been of an 

 importance equal to that of former years, while the third 

 volume of Hooker and Bentham's Genera now in the 

 course of printing, is the result in great measure of last 

 year's studies, which have never wavered. 



M. J. Berkeley 



NORDENSKJOLD'S ARCTIC VOYAGES'- 



NORDENSKJOLD'S next visit to Spitzbergen was 

 made in 1868, in a "small weak steamer" the 

 Sofia. The main object of the expedition was to pene- 

 trate as far north as possible, but as we have said already 

 it was not very successful in this respect. The other 

 objects of the expedition included an examination of the 

 flora and fauna of Bear Island, the single remaining 

 fragment of an extensive polar territory which probably 

 at one time connected Scandinavia with Spitzbergen, 

 the flora and marine fauna of which was still almost 

 unknown, though fitted to throw important light on the 

 animal life not only of the Scandinavian peninsula, but 

 also of the northern shores of Britain which are washed 

 by the Gulf Stream ; a careful examination of the strata 

 on Bear Island and at Ice Fjord and King' s Bay which 

 contain fossil plants, and a search for post-miocene 

 strata on the peninsula between Bell Sound and Ice 

 Fjord, which might afford some information as to the 

 transition from the warm climate of the miocene period, 

 which produced a luxuriant forest vegetation, to the ice 

 masses of the present time ; a more thorough examination 

 of the Saurian strata at Cape Thorsden ; an examination 

 of the fragments of skeletons of whales found on the 

 shores of Spitzbergen ; a continuation of the collection 

 and examination of the land and marine fauna and flora; 

 dredgings at the greatest depths ; magnetic and meteoro- 

 logical observations ; geographical determinations of 

 position, &c. 



It was on this occasion that a week's stay was made at 

 Bear Island, which lies about half-way between the north 

 coast of Norway and Spitzbergen, and of which we 

 should have liked to see a map and some views in 

 Mr. Leslie's volume. Some of the results obtained in 

 this visit are thus given by Mr. Leslie :— " Bear Island 

 forms a pretty level plateau, two to three hundred feet 

 above the sea, rising here and there into inconsiderable 

 elevations and furrowed by small valleys, in the bottoms 

 of which little streamlets seek their way among the naked 

 stones. In the south-east the appropriately named 

 Mount Misery rises perpendicularly from the sea to 

 a height of about 1,200 feet, and in the south the Fugle- 

 fjeld is about the same height. On neither of these, 

 however, is there any glacier or perpetual snow. It is 

 not the formation of the island which gives it so desolate 

 and forbidding an appearance, but the monotonous grey 

 colour of the whole landscape. No trace of any grass 

 turf is to be found in the interior, far less of any trees or 

 bushes ; only the Polar willow (^Salix polaris and herbacea) 

 with its thread-like stalks creeping in the moss, and two or 

 three leaves, scarcely the size of a finger-nail, raised 

 above it. Green patches in hollows where water has col- 

 lected and formed a sort of marsh consist principally 

 of mosses with scattered specimens of the Polar ranun- 

 culus {Ranunculus sulphureus) and a few other plants 

 and grasses sparingly mixed with them. Except in these 

 marshy places, the ground is nearly everywhere without 

 the slightest trace of covering. By the combmed action 

 of water and frost the rocks have been literally frozen 



' "The Arctic Voyages of Adolf Erik Nordenskjold. 18^8-1879." ^Ta^ 

 Illustrations and Maps. (London: MacmiUan and Co., 1879.) Continue* 

 frjm p. 6ti. 



