32 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 
BoTANICAL MICRO-CHEMISTRY is growing in’ importance if one may judge 
by the number of reagents coming into use. Eighty-eight, including only the 
more important ones in use up to June, 1883, are now advertised by Dr. Theodor 
Schuchardt (Gérlitz). While only a very few of these are necessary in the or- 
dinary study of histology, many of them are absolutely indispensable in the 
delicate investigations concerning the nucleus, bacteria, contents of cells, nature 
of cell walls, ete. 
Tue Hanpsoox of British Fungi, by M. C. Cooke, published in 1871, has 
been almost as useful to students in this country as in England, and the an- 
nouncement of a revised edition will meet with special favor from American 
botanists. The author, being unable to prepare the whole work at once, will 
give the Hymenomycetes in an appendix to Grevillea. The first installment in 
the December number, beginning with the white-spored agarics, embraces de- 
scriptions of thirty-eight species. ~ 
A PAPER HAS RECENTLY been read beforé the Linnean Society, by Mr. A. 
W. Bennett, on the reproduction of the Zygnemacee. His investigations go to 
support the views of De Bary and Wittrock, long since stated, that there are 
sexual differences in the conjugating cells. The cell taken to represent the fe- 
male is greater in length and diameter than the other, and it is found that the 
protoplasmic contents pass only in one direction, and that change first begins. 
in the chlorophyll bands of the supposed male cells, 
SECTIONS OF DIATOMS have been obtained by W. Prinz, by a rather unex- 
pected method. Sections made by imbedding a mass of diatoms in gum and 
cutting with a razor not proving satisfactory, Prinz boiled pieces of diatomace- 
ous earth in Canada balsam and then ground fragments thin by the same pro- 
- cess used in preparing mineral sections. He says: “In this way I have obtained 
thin lamin of about a square centimeter in surface, containing hundreds of 
sections at right angles to the long axis of the frustule. These preparations. 
* * * were of extreme thinness, in spite of the friability of the material.” 
Pror. D. S. Jorpan, in a recent visit to England, strolled into the village 
of Down in Kent, and talked with some of the villagers about Mr. Darwin. It 
is astonishing what little knowledge of his greatness had spread around his. 
home. Among much interesting testimony from the villagers, the following 
statement of Mr. Parslow, for many years his personal servant, is especially 
interesting to botanists: 
“The gardener used to bring plants into his room often of a morning, and 
he used to tie bits of cotton on don, and try to make them do things. He used 
to try all sorts of seeds. He would sow them in pots in his study.”— Am. Nat. 
Vonvox GLopator has long been considereda hollow spherical colony of uni. 
cellular alge. Mr, J. Levick thinks that Volvor is not hollow but that the col- 
_ ony encloses a perfectly transparent gelatinous material which can be made 
evident by transferring some roughly handled (and probably thus ruptured) 
Volvoces to water containing powdered carmine. The carmine will adhere to 
surfaces exposed by the rupture of the superficial colony. Of sections of Volvox 
