51 
CONFERENCE NOTES. 
The regular monthly conference of the scientific staff and stu- 
dents of the New York Botanical Garden met in the library on 
January 5. The first paper of the afternoon consisted of a 
discussion of the variations among the non-lobed Sassafras leaves 
by Mr. E. W. Humphreys. 
The results presented were based upon the study of five hun- 
dred simple Sassafras leaves collected at random in Pelham Bay 
Park, Bronx Park, and along the Palisades of New Jersey. 
The characters studied were the ratio of breadth to length, the 
leaf form, the condition of the tip and of the base, and the vena- 
tion. The ratio of length to breadth was found to vary from 1- 
1 to 1-334. In form, the leaves were oval, elliptical, oblong, 
oblanceolate, obovate, lanceolate, and ovate. Of these, the oval 
leaves were by far the most numerous, amounting to nearly 61 
per cent. Emarginate, truncate, obtuse, acute, acuminate, and 
cuspidate tips were found, the majority, over 60 per cent., of 
which were obtuse. In regard to the base, also, there existed 
considerable variation. In the larger number of leaves, about 
55 per cent., the base of the blade began at opposite points on 
either side of the petiole, in the remainder the blade began at the 
base at alternate points on the petiole. In the manner in which 
the leaf narrowed from the middle to the base, there was again 
much variation. The venation, of the type known as campto- 
drome, appears to be much more constant than any of the fore- 
going characters. In general the two large lowermost secondaries, 
and the tendency of the tertiaries and quaternaries to form quad- 
rangular areolae are especially noteworthy. 
Finally, this study tends to show that the practice of paleo- 
botanists in placing more stress for purposes of identification on 
the venation than upon what might be called the external char- 
acters is a sound one. 
Mr. F. D. Kern, of the agricultural experiment station of 
Indiana, gave some of the results of his critical work on the cedar- 
apple rusts, a group of heteroecious fungi, z. ¢., fungi which have 
in their life-histories two or more stages which stages usually 
occur on different kinds of host plants. 
