80 



appointed a temporary assistant in the botanical department of 

 Purdue University. 



An expedition under the leadership of Mr. O. F. Cook, of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, has recently visited 

 Guatemala with the special aim of gathering information in 

 regard to the rubber industry. 



" A Monograph on any genus or group of Thallophytes " is a 

 subject for which the Boston Society of Natural History offers 

 one of its Walker Prizes for the year 1903. The prize offered 

 for the best memoir is sixty dollars, though this may be increased 

 to one hundred dollars for a memoir of marked merit at the dis- 

 cretion of the committee. A second prize not exceeding fifty 

 dollars may also be awarded. Memoirs submitted in competition 

 must be in the hands of the secretary of the Society on or before 

 April 1, 1903. 



Dr. Oliver R. Willis died on April 27th at his home in White 

 Plains, N. Y., aged eighty -seven years. Most of Dr. Willis's life 

 was devoted to teaching, and he was well known as the editor and 

 reviser of Alphonso Wood's widely used botanical text-books. 

 He was the author, also, of a " Catalogue of Plants growing 

 without Cultivation in the State of New Jersey," a " Report of 

 the Flora of Westchester County " [New York], and of "A 

 Practical Flora for Schools and Colleges." Dr. Willis was one 

 of the earlier members of the Torrey Botanical Club. 



A private letter brings news of the death of George S. Jenman, 

 F.L.S., who was doubtless the best informed of any person in the 

 world in regard to the field study of the ferns of British tropical 

 America. From 1 873-1 879 he was Superintendent of the Botan- 

 ical Garden at Castleton, Jamaica, and since 1879 he had been 

 Government Botanist of British Guiana and Superintendent of 

 the Botanical Garden at Georgetown. Mr. Jenman described 

 many new ferns, mostly in the Gardener s Chronicle and the 

 Journal of Botany, and between 1890 and 1898 published a 

 synoptical list of the ferns of Jamaica with full descriptions. He 

 began also a conspectus of the ferns and fern-allies of the British 

 West Indies and Guiana, of which five parts had been issued at 

 the time of his death. 



