106 



to be products of cultivation, all point to the antiquity of its cul- 

 ture by the Amerinds. Francis W. Pennell, 



Secretary 



NEWS ITEMS 



Dr. Frank Shipley Collins, of North Eastham, Mass., for many 

 years a resident of Maiden, died suddenly on May 25, at New 

 Haven, Connecticut, in the seventy-third year of his age. Mr. 

 Collins was one of the best-known writers on the American algae, 

 having begun his special studies of this group of plants in early 

 manhood, as a diversion from the cares of business, and con- 

 tinuing them as an Evocation with remarkable zeal and success. 

 Perhaps the first of his contributions to the literature of the algae 

 was a note published in the Bulletin of the Torrcy Botanical Club 

 in 1880. His two most important works were " The Green 

 Algae of North America," published in 1909, with supplements in 

 1912 and 1918, and, with Dr. A. B. Hervey, ''The Algae of Ber- 

 muda,'" published in 191 /. At the time of his death he had nearly 

 ready for publication a paper on the algae of the Philippine 

 Islands and had projected also a manual of the marine algae of 

 the northeastern coast of the United States. In association with 

 Professor William A. Setchell and with the late Isaac Holden 

 he issued the " Phycotheca Boreali-Americana," a collection of 

 dried specimens of the algae of North America, which had 

 reached a total of 2.400 numbers, a total only slightly exceeded 

 by Rabenhorst's Die Algen Europa's, the only other series of 

 algae exsiccatae that ever approached the Phycotheca in magni- 

 tude. The passing of Farlow and of Collins leaves a wide gap 

 in the never too crowded ranks of the American students of the 

 algae. [M. A. H.] 



Professor Raymond J. Pool was engaged for the growing season 

 upon a piece of industrial research in Salt Lake City in connec- 

 tion with certain litigation which is of long standing and in which 

 a number of smelting companies, as well as all of the inhabitants, 

 are interested. A commission composed of chemists, chemical 

 engineers and botanists were at work under the direction of a 

 Commissioner appointed by the Federal Court. 



