^9 



Mrs. Lewcock is a graduate of Adelaide University and herself 

 a botanist. She will assist her husband in his work in the green- 

 houses of Cornell University. The prickly pear has become the 

 worst pest in Australia. It has covered over 60,000,000 acres, 

 much of it fertile land, making it impossible to cultivate or 

 even to use it for pasture. The cactus is spreading at the rate of 

 about 1,000,000 acres a year, and costing the country an esti- 

 mated amount of $10,000,000. Ayear ago Dr. Lewcock went with 

 Dr. Seaver of the New York Botanical Garden and Prof. H. H. 

 Whetzel of Cornell University to Bermuda to study and collect 

 a fungus of the prickly pear previously found there by Dr. Seaver. 



The Florida State Mail Service of the Associated Press re- 

 ported recently that Dr. R. M. Harper, whose "Cross-Section of 

 the Vegetation of Southern Ontario" appears in this issue, had 

 received three requests for berries of the saw-palmetto. The 

 palmetto covers millions of acres of land in Florida, but produces 

 little fruit, seeming to depend chiefly on vegetative growth for 

 propagation. Dr. Harper says that though "large sums of 

 money have been spent in grubbing the palmetto out of land 

 desired for agricultural or residential purposes, it is not an un- 

 mitigated nuisance. Its stems yield fiber and tannin, its ter- 

 minal bud is edible, its young leaves are eaten by cattle, its 

 flowers are an important source of honey, and its berries are in 

 demand for medicinal purposes, the oil extracted from them act- 

 ing beneficially on the mucous membranes. " 



Dr. T. D. A. Cockerell, professor of zoology at the University 

 of Colorado, whose notes on fossil plants have appeared fre- 

 quently in Torreya, expects to sail for England next June. From 

 there he will go to Russia and Siberia. Later he will visit India 

 and Siam, and about the first of next February go to Australia 

 and New Zealand. He will return to Boilder about the first of 

 September, 1928. {Science) 



P. H. Dorsett, Agricultural Explorer for the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, recently returned to the United 

 States after two and a half years of searching in China and the 

 tropical islands of Sumatra, Java, and Ceylon for plants that 

 may be useful in American agriculture. With the assistance of 

 his son, J-. H. Dorsett, he made thousands of selections of seeds, 

 plants, scions, bulbs, tubers, and cuttings. What is considered 

 as perhaps the best collection of soybean varieties ever brought to 



