127 



often cumbersome groups, thereby facilitating their study and 

 arrangement. At intervals throughout the work forty-seven 

 new genera are described, while the original descriptions of new 

 species aggregate more than three hundred. Pages 1 321-1325 

 are devoted to an appendix, and contain a number of descrip- 

 tions of plants discovered within the range during the several 

 years the book was in press, together with a few corrections. 

 The remaining pages are devoted to a list of the genera and 

 species published in the volume, a tabulated list of the orders and 

 families and a copious index. 



By the advent of this book, which so completely sets forth the 

 most recent botanical knowledge of an area of almost 650,000 

 square miles, the cause of southern botany has received an im- 

 pulse that has long been needed. 



C. D. Beadle. 



NEWS ITEMS 



Dr. D. T. MacDougal returned on July 29 from a month's 

 visit to the island of Jamaica. 



W. H. Pearson, Esq., of Park Crescent, Victoria Park, Man- 

 chester, England, desires to find a purchaser for set No. 4 of 

 Spruce's " Hepaticae Amazonicae et Andinae." 



Dr. J. N. Rose, assistant curator, Division of Plants, of the 

 U. S. National Museum, is having a botanical outing in Mexico. 

 He was expecting to reach the City of Mexico about August 20. 



Miss Anna Murray Vail, librarian of the New York Botanical 

 Garden, returned on August 4 after a three months' absence in 

 Europe, bringing with her five or six hundred volumes for the 

 library of the Garden. 



Mr. J. A. Shafer, custodian of the herbarium of the Carnegie 

 Museum, Pittsburg, spent the last two or three weeks of July at 

 the New York Botanical Garden, engaged in studying the col- 

 lections recently made by him in Cuba. 



Mr. George V. Nash, head gardener of the New York Botani- 

 cal Garden, sailed for Haiti on July 25 with the intent of spend- 

 ing- several weeks in making botanical collections there. He is 



