277 



tity of inflammable material, the inaccesvsible character of the 

 country, and unusually high winds all added to the difficulties 

 faced by the not incompetent but inadequate forest service. A 

 much larger sum should immediately be appropriated by Congress 

 for this work. 



NEWS ITEMS 



L. H. Pennington, instructor at Northwestern University, has 

 recently been made assistant professor of botany at Syracuse 



University. 



The annual meeting of the American Society of Naturalists 

 will be held (Dec. 28-30) at Cornell University. Dr. D. T. 

 MacDougal will deliver the presidential address. 



A drinking fountain, the memorial to Dr. James Fletcher men- 

 tioned some months ago in Torreya, has been erected at the 

 Central Experiment Farm, Canada. 



Professor W. A. Henry, professor emeritus of agriculture of 

 the University of Wisconsin, is planning to spend a year investi- 

 gating agriculture in Europe. 



Dr. William A. Cannon of the Desert Laboratory of the Car- 

 negie Institution is spending a year abroad, visiting European 

 botanical gardens and African deserts. 



Dr. W. A. Murrill, of the New York Botanical Garden, has 

 just returned from a European trip taken primarily to examine 

 type specimens of fungi. 



Dr. Ormond S. Butler (Ph.D. Cornell, 1910) has been ap- 

 pointed instructor in horticulture at the College of Agriculture 

 of the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Agricultural 

 Experiment Station. 



Letchworth Park, the thousand acre park given conditionally 

 to the state of New York in 1907, became the possession of the 

 State upon the death of the donor, William Pryor Letchworth, 

 on December i. 



The sixty-second meeting of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, and the ninth of the "Convocation 



