re WS. 
Dr. F. CZAPEK has been called to the assistant professorship of botany 
and technical microscopy in the German Institute of Technology in Prag. 
ProFr. Dr. HUGO DE VRIEs has been called to the directorate of the botan- 
ical garden at Amsterdam made vacant by the recent retirement of Dr. 
Oudemans, 
Pror. Dr. K. MULLER of the royal school of technology at Berlin has 
undertaken, as a side duty, the botanical instruction in the royal horticultural 
institute in Potsdam-Wildpark. 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY at its recent sesquicentennial conferred the 
degree LL.D. upon George Lincoln Goodale, Fisher professor of natural his- 
tory and director of the botanical garden in Harvard University. 
Dr. A. Hansoire6 will discuss in a large work which he is preparing for 
the press, upon the general lines of his Phytodynamische Untersuchungen, 
ombrophoby in flowers, resistance of pollen to water, gamo- and carpotropic 
movements, and similar curvatures. 
THE CATALOGUE of microscopes and laboratory apparatus just issued by 
the Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. is more than a mere trade list and will well 
repay examination by those interested in laboratory appliances. Among the 
novelties the Hastings’ aplanatic triplets and the attachable mechanical stage 
may be commended most heartily. 
On OcTOBER Ioth the botanical seminar of the University of Nebraska 
celebrated its decennial. There have been only twenty members of various 
ranks in the ten years, of whom ten are in residence in 1896. It is truly 
remarkable how much valuable work this society has done under the inspi- 
ration of its indefatigable leader, Dr. Bessey. 
TREE, Saccoglottis Amazonica Martius, which produces one of the 
“drift fruits” that long puzzled West Indian botanists, has been rediscovered 
upon Trinidad. The source of the fruits was established by the sketches of 
Criiger who collected specimens of the tree upon Trinidad years ago. e 
superintendent of the Trinidad gardens, Mr. J. H. Hart, sent a collector to 
hunt up the trees, and after two expeditions he was successful in securing not 
only good herbarium specimens but also flowers and fruits in alcohol, and 
seeds from which the gardens have raised some healthy plants. 
[DECEMBER 
