NEWS. 
Dr. HERMAN AMBRONN, of Leipzig, has been called to a professorship 
in the University of Leipzig. 
THE French Academy of Sciences has elected as corresponding members Ae 
in the section of botany Professors Schwendener and Pfeffer, in place of 
Baron Miiller and Professor Cohn, deceased. 
PROFESSOR A, S. HITCHCOCK, of Kansas Agricultural College, has been 
elected director of the Académie internationale de gtographie botanigue for 
1900, succeeding Casimir DeCandolle. A portrait is published in the Budletin 
for Mar 
M. ADRIEN FRANCHET died suddenly on February 15 in his sixty-sixth - 
year. He is best known as the author of the Flore de Lotre-et-Cher, mono- 
graphs of Verbascum and Strophanthus, the Flore du Japon, the Plantae 
Davidanae, the latter the elaboration of the collections of the abbé David 4 in 
Mongolia and eastern Thibet, and the Sertum Somalense. ) 
AT THE meeting of the Academy of Science of St. Louis on March 19) 
1900, Mr. H. von Schrenk exhibited some burls on the white spruce (Picea 
Canadensis). The burls, unlike most of those so far known, are almost 
round, and are covered with smooth bark. They grow of various sizes, and 
wood fibers because of their thinner walls and greater internal diameter, give s 
ing the wood a spongy character. Long rows of secondary resin passages 
mond-shaped in cross-section, the longer diameter extending radially. 
Between the holes the wood fibers are compressed tangentially. The speaker 
sure exerted from without, probably by the bark. No holes were found 
where the bark pressure had been released, 7. ¢., where the bark had burst. 
These results are not in harmony with the findings as to bark pressure 
reached by Krabbe. The speaker described the manner in which burls a ‘ 
usually formed, and showed the way in which these burls form, by excessiV€ . 
growth, induced by a wound or branch stump.— WILLIAM TRELEASE, Secre- 
206 [APRIL 1900 
