NEWS. 
Dr. W. F. R. SuRtNGAR, Professor of Botany and Director of the Botani- 
cal Garden at Leiden since 1862, died on July 11 at the age of 66 years. 
Dr. CARL FRITSCH has been appointed director of the Botanical Museum 
of Vienna as the successor of the late Dr. Anton Kerner von Marilaun. 
PROFESSOR Dr. KARL GOEBEL, director of the Institute for Plant Phys- 
iology in Munich, is absent upon a journey to Australia and New Zealand. 
PROFESSOR VOLNEY M. SPALDING, of the University of Michigan, has 
been granted a year’s leave of absence. Dr, Julia W. Snow has been appointed 
instructor in botany in the same institution. 
PROFESSOR L. M. UNDERWOOD of Columbia University. returned on 
October 4 from his vacation trip in Europe, where he examined many herba- 
ria for type material of Pteridophyta and Polyporei. 
Mr. C, F. BAKER of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute sailed from New 
York on November 5 for an extended collecting tour in South America, 
beginning at the northern border of Columbia, the region first visited by 
Jussieu and Bonpland. He will touch at Jamaica on the way. 
THE IMPORTANT investigations by W. Belajeff upon the male prothallia 
of the water ferns (Hydropteridez), published in Russian in 1890, have 
been made more available to botanists in general by their republication 
in German. See Bot. Zeit. 56°: 141-194. AZ. 2. 1898. 
THE Lioyp series of photogravures of American Fungi has been increased 
by the issue last month of two numbers, one of Polyporus umbellatus Fr., and 
the other of Strobilomyces strobilaceus Scop. The latter, showing a common 
species known as black boletus, is from a remarkably perfect photograph. 
PROFESSOR Dr. PAUL Knuth, of Kiel, started in October from Genoa 
upon a scientific tour of the world. He will be absent from eight to ten — 
months, going through India to Java, where he will remain in Buitenzorg for 
Some time, thence to China and Japan, and finally by way of Honolulu to this 
country, 
Mr. E. W. D. Hotway, who spent six weeks in Mexico during September 
and October, has brought back many new and interesting rusts and other 
1898] ; 
