218 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 502. 



Flagellatre, Dinoflagellatw and the Silicoflagel- 

 latce, which never had any good right to be 

 included among plants. These are the things 

 which are happily characterized by Dlr. 

 Thaster in a recent article in the Botanical 

 Gazette, as ' a menagerie of organisms whose 

 zoology is orthodox to a degree.' 



Why the botanists should be bothered with 

 all these ' beasts ' (as Dr. Gray would have 

 called them) is a puzzle which has not yet 

 been satisfactorily solved. Whether the purg- 

 ing of the membership of the plant kingdom 

 should go further and result in the expulsion 

 of Volvox and its near allies is difficult to 

 decide. In everything but its color Volvox 

 is an animal — and a very good one at that — 

 but whether its assumption of its green coat 

 is sufficient to hide its essentially animal 

 nature in other respects is, perhaps, open to 

 argument, especially since it is such a pretty 

 and interesting organism for laboratory dem- 

 onstrations. While we should like to retain 

 it, we are compelled to say that in all prob- 

 ability it is to be relegated to Dr. Gray's do- 

 main of ' beasts.' 



A FLORA or PENNSYLVANIA. 



Nearly seventy years ago Dr. Thomas C. 

 Porter began the collection and study of the 

 plants of Pennsylvania, and until his death 

 in 1901 he continued the work practically 

 without interruption. At his death his manu- 

 script was found to be essentially completed, 

 needing only the editorial supervision of some 

 one familiar with his ideas. Such an editor 

 was found in Dr. J. K. Small, of the New 

 York Botanical Garden, under whose direction 

 the ' Flora of Pennsylvania ' was brought out 

 by Ginn, the Boston publisher. It is a syn- 

 optical flora, all descriptions of orders, fam- 

 ilies, genera and species being included in 

 carefully made keys. Especial attention is 

 given to habitat and distribution, and in this 

 particular this is one of the most satisfactory 

 floras ever published in this country. 



The book contains about three hundred 

 pages, exclusive of the very full indexes. It 

 deals with the spermatophytes only, the ferns 

 not being included, so that the word ' flora ' 



is strictly proper as applied to the book. It 

 includes 2,201 species, representing 655 genera, 

 156 families and 43 orders. It is a great and 

 enduring monument to the industry and 

 ability of the author. 



Charles E. Bessey. 

 University of Nebraska. 



AGRICULTURE IN JAPAN.* 

 Only 14,995,272 acres, or 15.7 per cent; of 

 the whole area of Japan, exclusive of Pormosa, 

 consists of arable land, and 55 per cent, of the 

 agricultural families cultivate less than 2 

 acres each; 30 per cent, cultivate 2 acres or 

 more up to IJ cho, or a little less than 3| acres, 

 leaving 15 per cent, of the farmers who culti- 

 vate farms of 3| acres or more. A comparison 

 of the whole area under cultivation with the 

 number of farm workers shows that, on an 

 average, one man cares for a little less than 

 an acre. 



The government has attempted to aid the 

 progress of agriculture by laws respecting irri- 

 gation, the protection of forests so as to con,- 

 trol the flow of rivers in the interest of the 

 farmer, the formation of farmers' guilds, the 

 rearrangement of farm boundaries, and the 

 improvement of drainage systems. Small as 

 the farms are, their parts are usually separated 

 so that a farm of 2 acres may consist of sev- 

 eral nonadjacent lots, the average size of a 

 lot being about one eighth of an acre. A law 

 which went into force in 1900 provides for the 

 rearrangement of boundaries by farmers ex- 

 changing fields for those owned by others so 

 as to make the farms more compact and en- 

 large the fields to permit the use of horses 

 and machinery, at the same time increasing 

 the tillable area by straightening some bound- 

 aries and removing others. About 20,000 

 acres have already come under the operation 

 of this law. 



For the purpose of further promoting agri- 

 cultural interests the government maintains a 

 State experimental farm and nine branch 

 farms. The work at these farms is largely 

 theoretical, and is divided into eight depart- 

 ments, viz.j seed, saplings, agricultural chem- 



'■* Consular report from United States Consul- 

 General Bellows, Yokohama, Japan. 



