ie 
pO PRS She ae i S88 nn Se ales ait oa 
1897] OPEN LETTERS 205 
the people at large. The difficulties in comprehendin ng the sae thorciore: 
me 
rightly adopt the metric notation; but the public at large, | think, can only 
be brought to it gradually, through the use of it in the primary schools, 
Very truly yours, 
ADDISON BROWN. 
A comparative tabulation of the metric and English units will be printed 
in the third volume of ///ustrated Flora.—N.L. Britton, New York Botan- 
tical Garden. 
OVERSIGHT OF AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS. 
To the Editors of the Botanical Gazette :—The attention of botanists 
should be called to the following somewhat glaring oversight of an important 
botanical paper. In 1892 Dr. Thaxter‘ published a paper entitled “On the 
Myxobacteriacez, a new order of Schizomycetes.” One would have sup- 
posed that such a title would itself have attracted general attention. His 
paper is very complete, basing the new order of Schizomycetes upon the 
description of the structure and development of eight species in three genera, 
and is very well illustrated. This important contribution does not appear to 
have been noticed by Hugo Zukal,? who has recently founded a new order of 
REE meses upon a form identical with one of the species 
included in Dr. Thaxter’s paper. As far as one may judge safely from a 
comparison ee descriptions and figures, Zukal’s Myxodotrys vartabilis seems 
to be identical with Chondromyces crocatus B. & C. as described by Dr. 
eatee os | 
In respect to the structure of the plasmodium-like condition, together with 
the structure and development of the cystophores (Sporentrager) and cysts 
(Sporen) we find some important differences in the results obtained by these 
two investigators. Zukal finds granular matter in the substance of the plas- 
modium stage and some of it in the form of rods, but he considers them all 
to be microsomata. When the cystophores are developed the “rod-like 
Microsomata disappear and in their places are found numerous long 
threads.” Thaxter finds the pseudo-plasmodium to be made up of rod-like 
bodies whose general structure “together with their vegetative multiplication 
by fusion renders their schizomycetous nature as individuals a matter hardly 
to be doubted.” When the fructification is to be develapeil the rods swarm 
"Bor. GAZETTE, ei bieseliteg pl. 22-25. 1892. 
*Myxobotrys variabilis Zuk. als — einer neuen ee, 
— - Ber. Deut. heaping 340. 1896. 
