7 
March 2, 1894. 
SClE NCE: 
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MEMORABILIA BOTANICA, II. 
(Audited by Erwin F. Smith, B.S., D.S., Washington, D.C.) 
A JOURNEY INTO THE TROPICS. 
In recent years the botanical garden at Buitenzorg, 
Java, has become a sort of Mecca for European botanists. 
Solms-Laubach, Schimper, Goebel, and many others have 
there studied tropical vegetation. Probably no other 
botanical garden in the tropics offers as good facilities for 
study, and certainly no other is so well-equipped, has 
been used as extensively or has been productive of any- 
thing like as much good work. 
_ One of the results of a sojourn at Buitenzorg is a new 
book of 300 pp. by Dr. Haberlandt (‘‘ Eine Botanische 
‘Tropenreise ’’) giving travel sketches and graphic accounts 
of the Indo-Malaysian vegetation. The author has not 
confined himself to dry. dissertations, but has had his eyes 
open to the biological’side of botany, has known how 
wisely to omit, and has mixed in enough general observa- 
tions and human interest to make a readable book and 
one of considerable general interest, even without the 
useful illustrations of characteristic vegetation, repro- 
duced from pencil drawings: To describe all the interest- 
ing things in this book would be nearly equivalent to 
translating it. It must suffice, therefore, to call atten- 
tion to some of the leading features. ‘The book begins 
with the departure from Triest; gives a chapter or two 
on the outward voyage, including some account of 
Bombay; describes the garden at Buitenzorg; discusses 
its climate and devotes a chapter to each of the following 
topics: The tree of the tropics, tropical foliage, flowers 
and fruits of the tropics, lianas, epiphytes, tropical ant- 
plants, the primeval forest, the mangroves, etc. The 
reader will also find fresh and interesting notes on a 
variety of cultivated: plants,—tea, coffee, rice, cocoa-nut, 
cinnamon, cinchona, banana, etc. Various excursions 
into the island are described, and one chapter is devoted 
to the animals of Java and another to the inhabitants,— 
their language, customs, amusements, etc. On the 
return journey Dr. Haberlandt spent a few days in 
Ceylon and finally crossed the Arabian desert in Egypt, 
already classic ground by reason of the admirable 
researches of George Volkens on the adaptations of the 
desert flora. 
Not least attractive is the poetic and artistic feeling 
and the strong personal element that pervades the book. 
The following are some of the things that attracted special 
attention: The extent to which variegated leaved plants 
SCIENCE. 
1ts 
have been substituted for flowers in tropical landscape 
gardening; the broken contour of the forest, certain 
species towering far above the rest and noticeable at a 
long distance; the general whiteness of the tree trunks; 
the preponderance of woody growths; the form of branch- 
ing, In many cases quite unlike that of European trees; 
the very rapid pushing of leafy shoots which hang down, 
pale or reddish, weak and limp, until they have reached 
full size and then gradually become green, erect and 
self-supporting; the nearly uniform absence of periodicity 
in leaf fall; the marked tendency of the foliage to be 
entire, smooth and coriaceous, to which is often added a 
lacquer-like lustre; the dazzling reflected light of tropical 
foliage, in striking contrast with the mild transmitted light 
of European foliage; the numerous modifications of 
leaves and changes of position to avoid very intense light; 
the enormous assimilative power of individual leaves and 
the comparatively small number on a tree; the excessive 
brightness of the sky and the great amount of light in the 
interior of a tropical forest, the shade being not nearly so 
dense as in an European beech wood; the enormous 
vegetative activity, the sharp struggle for light, and the 
occupancy in the forest of every available foot of space, 
an almost impenetrable thicket on the ground, epiphytes 
and lianas on the trunks of trees in great profusion lifted 
up out of the surface tangle, and individual trees reaching 
the necessary light by expanding their tops above the 
rest of the forest; the general lack of protective adapta- 
tions against cold, so that one comes to understand the 
full meaning of many northern modifications only after he 
has studied the tropical vegetation; the very rapid growth 
(in young trees frequently as much as five metres a year), 
which takes place in an atmosphere so moist that trans- 
piration is greatly diminished or at times stopped alto- 
gether, and which goes to show that there is no necessary 
connection between the transpiration stream and the 
upward movement of plant foods from the roots, osmotic 
action being sufficient to bring it about; the noticeable 
absence of palms from the forest; the curious adaptations 
to conserve moisture, roots within pitchers, etc.; the 
occurrence of breathing roots in the swamp plants, Sov- 
neratia and Avicennia, and of bracing roots in many trees, 
in Stercudia enormously developed; the numerous extra 
functions of tropical roots, most striking of all ‘‘the 
change of the aérial roots of various Orchideae into green, 
ribbon-shaped organs of assimilation” (Ze@uophyllum 
Zollingert has no other); the preponderance of bright 
colors in tropical flowers (white, yellow, orange, and 
bright red) and the rarity of blue flowers; and, finally, 
the many leaves, stems, etc., in which a particular form 
seems to be of no value to the plant but has been retained 
because not harmful, the hypothesis being put forward 
that many of these forms, not all, are mere ‘‘ Luxus 
Anpassungen,”’ due to the internal energy of the plant, 
and are not modifications brought about by external 
agencies, such as food and climatic changes, the author 
pointing out that the multiplicity of these variations is 
greatest in the places where, according to the Darwinian 
law, they should be least, viz., in the tropics, where the 
climate varies but little,—‘‘ Zwecklose Blattgestalten und 
ebensolche Verzweigungsformen, phantastischsinnlose 
Bliitenmodelle und tausend anderer morphologische 
Eigenschaften, die nutzlos sind, bleiben erhalten weil 
ihre Ausmerzung kein unbedingtes Erforderniss fiir der 
Fortexistenz der betreffenden Pflanzen war.” 
This is a volume to go on the shelf with Schimper and 
Goebel, but not until it has been read and enjoyed from 
cover to cover. 
PARASITIC ALGAE. 
One of the most interesting botanical finds during the 
Madison meeting of the A. A. A. S. was made by Mr. 
