1900] CURRENT LITERATURE 73. 
possibly be a drawback to a very wide circulation. It will perhaps find its 
readers among a much older group of students than the writer appears to hope, 
judging from the popular title and the method of presentation. 
As the book pleads so eloquently for more work in Systematic mycology, 
its own success is likely to make more apparent the need of a work presenting 
an account of the detailed morphology, life histories, and possible relationships. 
of the orders and families. With the. advances in so many lines since the 
work of De Bary, the need of such a text in English cannot be too strongly 
emphasized. 
Professor Underwood's book is a marvel in its compactness, with a wonder- 
fully uniform tone throughout, condensed and yet very clear.— BRADLEY 
. Davis. 
MINOR NOTICES. 
M. Tu. Husnot is indefatigable. Not content with his journal, the Revue 
Bryologique, nor with his Muscologia Gallica, Hepaticologia Gallica, and 
Sphagnologia Europea with their 142 plates, not to mention many smaller 
works, nor with his M/usci Gallia, Hlepatice Gallie, and other exsiccatz, with 
their 1300 numbers, he now puts before the botanical public a quarto fascicle 
of almost 100 pages and 33 plates, describing and figuring the grasses, wild 
and cultivated, of France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Switzerland. More 
than this, M. Husnot is his own draughtsman, lithographer, and publisher. 
The quarto form has been adopted partly for economy and partly for the 
convenience of the large plates, allowing a considerable number of allied 
species to be drawn side by side. The letter press is double columned and 
compact. In substance the text is such as one finds in a manual rather than 
a monograph. The plates are fairly accurate, their most conspicuous defects. 
being in some of the figures of habit. Details of the flowers are shown an 
keys to genera and species are given. Altogether, but for its unwieldy form, 
the author has produced a useful work for the botanists and cultivators of 
western Europe.—C. R. B 
VOLUME XX of the 7ransactions of the American Microscopical Society 
contains three papers of interest to bacteriologists and an elaborate study of 
the primary meristem of thirteen species of Caryophyllales, by Dr. F. E. 
Clements of the University of Nebraska. The bacteriological papers are 
“The persistence of bacteria in the milk ducts of the cow’s udder” by A. R 
ard; “Experiments in feeding some insects with cultures of comma or 
cholera bacilli ” by R. L. Maddox ; and “ Questions in regard to the diphthe- 
tia bacillus” by M. A. Veeder. An abstract of a portion of Dr. Clements’ 
Husnot, Tu.: Graminées: descriptions, figures et usages des graminées spon- 
tanées et cultivées de France, Belgique, Iles Britanniques, Suisse. 4to. pp. viii 92. 
ls. 33. Cahan, par Athis (Orne): Th. Husnot. 1896-1899. 25 francs. 
