July 15, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



77 



northern Colombia, with several assistants, 

 working under the joint auspices of the Car- 

 negie Museum of Pittsburg, Pa., and the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History of New York 

 City. Mr. Smith and his party will give special 

 attention to insects, birds and mammals, and 

 will probably remain for a long time in the field, 

 visiting other portions of northern South Amer- 

 ica after completing their work in Colombia. 

 Messrs. Outram and E. A. Bangs have also an 

 experienced collector, Mr. W. W. Brown, Jr., 

 in the Santa Marta region of Colombia, from 

 whom they have recently received considerable 

 consignments of birds and mammals, prelimi- 

 nary notices of which have already begun to 

 appear. Mr. George K. Cherrie, known for his 

 work in Costa Eica and San Domingo, has been 

 for some months engaged collecting birds and 

 other specimens for the Hon. Walter Roths- 

 child, in the Orinoco districts of Venezuela, 

 where also the brothers Samuel N. and Edward 

 Klages, of Crafton, Pa., have recently estab- 

 lished themselves for natural history explora- 

 tion, partly under the auspices of the American 

 Museum of Natural History. While they will 

 give their attention primarily to insects, a por- 

 tion of their time will be devoted to birds and 

 mammals. 



The Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden 

 for 1898 contains two papers by Mr. J. B. S. 

 Norton. In the first of these, entitled ' A 

 Coloring Matter found in some Borraginacefe, ' 

 it is stated that in 1897 a small borage, which 

 proved to be Plagiobothrys Arizonicus, was sent 

 to the Garden from New Mexico, with the 

 statement that the sheep feeding on it have 

 their muzzles dyed of an intense red color. On 

 further examination of the plant it proved to 

 be alkannin, a dye produced by a number of 

 borages, several of which are commented on in 

 the paper. The second paper, ' Notes on some 

 Plants Chiefly from the Southern United States,' 

 is an account of an examination of material 

 contained in the herbaria of Joor and Jermy, 

 and a number of smaller collections from the 

 Southwest. Mr. Norton has found species of 

 phanerogams which are believed to be new, 

 which he describes and figures in the article. 



The same Report contains an article by 



Charles Henry Thompson on ' The Species of 

 Cacti Commonly Cultivated under the Generic 

 Name Anhalonium.' These cacti have of late 

 years come into considerable popularity in the 

 collections of amateurs. Mr. Thompson divides 

 them into two genera, Ariocarpus and Lopho- 

 pJiora, the former including what are commonly 

 known as A. fissuratum, A. sulcatum, A. furfur- 

 acens and A. prismaticum, while the latter in- 

 cludes what are sometimes treated as two forms 

 or varieties of a single species and sometimes 

 as two species under the names A. Williamsii 

 and A. Lewinii. A simple key and half-tones 

 prepared from photographs of living specimens 

 render the determination of all of the species 

 quite easy. 



Commenting on the Annual Report of the 

 Field Columbian Museum in an editorial. Nat- 

 ural Science says : " We should like to ask why 

 it is that reports which come to us from Amer- 

 ican museums are always interesting to read, 

 in strong contrast to the reports which come 

 from most similar establishments in our own 

 country and in Europe. It would seem that 

 the writing of these reports is a labor of love to 

 the Americans, while our own curators only do 

 it as a piece of official routine. The conse- 

 quence is that, in the present Report, as an 

 example, the curator finds hints, suggestions 

 and actual information of value to himself; 

 whereas the Report of, say, the British Museum, 

 contains little but lists of donations and the 

 numbers of specimens registered during the 

 year, with similar matter of no use to anybody 

 in the wide world. 



A Reuter telegram from Tromso says that 

 Mr. Walter Wellman, the American explorer, 

 left on June 27th on board his ice steamer 

 Frithyof for the North Polar regions. Just be- 

 fore his departure from England Mr. Wellman 

 gave to Renter's representatives an account of 

 his expedition, in which he said that his aim 

 was to reach the North Pole, and also to ex- 

 plore the still unknown northern parts of Franz 

 Josef Land. The party consists of James H. 

 Gore, Columbian University, a geodesist ; Lieu- 

 tenant Evelyn B. Baldwin, who was on the 

 Greenland ice cap with Lieutenant Peary ; Dr. 

 Edward Hofma, naturalist and medical of&cer ; 



