* 
66 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [ JANUARY 
the terminal part where the flowers are in anthesis. (4) Plants whose flowers, 
erect and open in fine weather, upon the approach of rainy weather not only 
close the perianth, but also turn the flower away from the source of the rain 
drops by curvatures of the pedicels or axes.— C. R. B. 
THE USTILAGINE of Kansas have been listed and their germination in 
part studied by Mr. J. B. S. Norton.*5 Thirty-three species are given, of which 
two are described as new, viz., Ustilago filifera on Bouteloua racemosa and B. 
oligostachya, and U. mznoron B. hirsuta. The previously known species on B. 
oligostachya (U. Bouteloue Kell. and Swing.) was studied and compared 
with the new kinds. The germination of nineteen species was attempted, 
and with success in the case of fourteen. The characteristic results of the 
germination are shown upon five plates.— J. C. A. 
IN A RECENT paper® Professor L. F. Ward treats of some analogies in the 
lower Cretaceous of Europe and America. Among the various subjects 
considered, the occurrence of ancestral forms of angiosperms in the Jurassic 
and lower Cretaceous, and the distribution of fossil cycad forests are of spe- 
cial interest to botanists. In America fine collections of lower Cretaceous 
cycadean trunks have been found in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in beds 
probably belonging to the Kootanie, and in the Potomac formation of Mary- 
land. During his recent visit in Europe, Professor Ward found a collection 
of twenty-one cycadean trunks, which had been obtained from the Purbeck 
beds of the Isle of Portland, where the specimens described by Buckland in 
1828 were obtained. These specimens, Mehicl have been purchased by the _ 
United States National Museum, are small and dwarfish when compared with | 
the American forms from Maryland and the Black Hills. A fossil cycad 
trunk has also been found in the Scaly clays of the Province of Bologna, — 
Italy. The Scaly clays are undoubtedly lower Cretaceous, and it is probable 
that all the numerous cycad trunks found in Italy were derived sedis : 
from these Scaly clays. From a consideration of these facts, it seems that 
cycads of the tuberous stem type were of very wide distribution in the tem- 
re 
primava from the iia beds (Urgonian) of Grecoland. : 
seretere, that the present dominant vegetation had its origin in the middle 
