410 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 33. 



BOTANY. 



Ellis' North American fungi. — Dr. Farlow, wbo 

 edited the third and, in part, the eleventh century of 

 this collection, contributes valualjle notes on some of 

 the Peronosporeae and Uredineae so far distributed, 

 witli some pertinent remarks on the nomenclature 

 of the latter group. Though desirous of retaining 

 the earliest specific names wherever practicable, the 

 writer does not believe, lyith Winter, in applying the 

 name given to the Aecidium of a Puccinia or other 

 teleutosporic form to the species, when its several 

 stages are grouped under the generic name of the 

 latter form. " For practical reasons, if for no other, 

 the custom of substituting an aecidial specific name, 

 for a name given to a Uredo or teleutosporic form, 

 should by all means be avoided. Of all the Uredi- 

 neae described by older writers, probably none are 

 more difficult to determine satisfactorily at the pres- 

 ent day than the species of Aecidium, so called. Origi- 

 nal specimens of that genus are, as a rule, not so well 

 preserved as those of other genera of the order; and, 

 if one usually gets little satisfaction from examina- 

 tion of what is left of the original types, he is scarce- 

 ly better off on reading the older descriptions. It 

 was not unfrequenlly the habit of older mycologists, 

 to desciibe as varieties of one Aecidium forms found 

 on the most diverse plants; and most certainly it is 

 going too far to substitute for the name of a Pucci- 

 nia, let us say, which has passed current for many 

 years, the name given by an old authority, like Per- 

 soon or Link, to what he considered a variety of an ill- 

 defined Aecidium. It cannot be said that any want 

 of respect to the older writers is shown by abandon- 

 ing their aecidial names in such cases." 



Witli respect to the Uredo name, however, the case 

 is held to be somewhat different. "As a matter of 

 fact, the types of the earlier-described Uredo forms are 

 much better preserved than Aecidia, and examinations 

 of older herbaria frequently enable one to determine 

 with accuracy what form was meant by an older 

 author. Furthermore, the Uredo and teleutosporic 

 forms frequently are found together in the same 

 sorus, or in close proximity; and examinations of 

 authentic specimens often show the relation of an 

 old-described Uredo to a more recently described 

 teleutosporic form. The most important considera- 

 tion, however, is the following. Many of the forms 

 now recognized as teleutosporic have one -celled 

 spores, and were originally described as forms of 

 Uredo; and, in such cases, one must go back to the 

 original specific names." He adds, however, "If I 

 have advocated retaining the older Uredo name 

 in cases where we know with cei'tainty what was 

 meant by the earlier mycologists, I have by no means 

 intended encouraging the use of names about which 

 there is doubt, either from the absence of typical 

 specimens, or confusion of several species by older 

 writers. Rather than favor that method — if one 

 may say so — of forcing priority, I should prefer to 

 give up the substitution of all old Uredo names, ex- 

 cept, possibly, in the case of species now referred to 

 Uromyces." The use of the parenthesis for the or- 

 iginal authority for the species, though somewhat 



cumbrous and generally discarded by phenogamic 

 botanists, is, on the wliole, advocated, especially since 

 the genera of fungi are often not very definitely 

 fixed. "A species of Fries, for instance, may, dur- 

 ing five years, be dragged through no one knows how 

 many new genera; and it is with a mildly malicious 

 satisfaction that one sees those modern writers who 

 adopt minute generic subdivision, forced by the pre- 

 vailing custom to add the ' {Fr.) ' as a slight tribute 

 to the past." 



Besides the characters of eight species, pieviously 

 nondescript, the notes also contain mucli critical in- 

 formation concerning the synonymy of many of tlie 

 species, and the geographical distribution of others. 

 An interesting fact is the preponderance, among our 

 Peronosporae, of species germinating by the produc- 

 tion of zoospores, though this would appear to belter 

 adapt them to an insular climate than to ours, which 

 is a continental one, subject to extremes of heat and 

 moisture. — {Proc. Ainer. acad., May 0, 1S83. ) w. t. 



[255 



ZOOLOGY. 



Crustacea, 



Parasite of the salmon. — Carl F. Gissler in an 

 anonymous article, in the American naturalist for 

 August, describes and figures, as a new species of 

 Caligus, a parasite of the salmon of Puget sound. 

 The species is probably Lepeophtheirus salmonis, 

 which infests the salmon upon both sides of the 

 North Atlantic. — s. I. s. [256 



Brachyura and Anomura off the coast of 

 New England. — In a preliminary report on the 

 Bracliyura and Anomura dredged in deep water off 

 the south coast of New England by the U. S. fish 

 commission in 1880-82, S. I. Smith enumerates 

 thirty-one species taken in sixty-five to six hun- 

 dred and forty fathoms, and gives full descriptions 

 and figures of the new forms discovered. The report, 

 although only a supplement to a notice of the Crus- 

 tacea dredged in the same region in 1880, describes 

 three new genera and seven new species. Of the 

 thirty-one species enumerated, only four were known 

 from the south coast of New England jnrevious to 

 1880, and more than half of the whole number were 

 new to science; and yet none of the species belong 

 to the abyssal fauna proper, and nearly all of them 

 were taken most abundantly in less than two hundred 

 fathoms. , The dredgings off Martha's Vineyai-d in 

 1882 revealed the total, or almost total, disappearance 

 of several of the larger species of Crustacea, which 

 were exceedingly abundant, in the same region, in 

 1880 and 1881. The disappearance of these species 

 was apparently connected directly with the disappear- 

 ance of the tile-fish (Lopholatilus) from tlie same 

 region; and on this account complete tables are given 

 of the specimens examined from all the dredgings in 

 the region in question. Five species, which were ex- 

 ceedingly abundant in 1880 and 1881, were not found, 

 or found only very rarely, in 1882; and five others, 

 taken several times in 1880 and 1881, were not taken 

 at all in 1882. These species were specially charac- 

 teristic of the narrow belt of comparatively warm 



