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Benjamin Franklin Bush died on February 14 at his home 

 in Courtney, Missouri. For forty years, until his retirement a 

 few years ago, he was postmaster in his native village. He was 

 an authority on native plants, birds and reptiles. In 1898 and 

 1899 he made a trip covering 50,000 miles with the late Charles 

 S. Sargent of Harvard in a study of oaks. From 1900 to 1913 he 

 collected shrubs and other plants for Harvard. 



Dr. William R. Maxon, since 1914 associate curator in 

 charge of the National Herbarium in the U. S. National Mu- 

 seum under the Smithsonian Institution, has been made cura- 

 tor. (Science) 



Fifteen acres of woodland have been added to the Connec- 

 ticut Arboretum at Connecticut College, New London. The ar- 

 boretum has been set aside for the preservation of native plants 

 of the state. 



Dr. William Henry Weston, Jr., professor of botany and 

 chairman of the department at Harvard University has been 

 appointed visiting professor of mycology at the Johns Hopkins 

 University. (Science.) 



On March 2 Mr. John Grimshaw Wilkinson died at his home 

 in Leeds, England in his eighty-first year. Although blind he 

 had identified and classified more than a thousand plants by 

 the sense of touch. He was an honorary Master of Arts in Leeds 

 University. 



The Brooklyn Botanic Garden sent out a special news re- 

 lease in early March regarding the flowering at the garden of a 

 tree rare in this country, Parrotia persica, the iron tree or 

 Temir-Agatsch, of northern Persia and the region of Mt. Ararat. 

 The tree is a member of the Witch Hazel Family with leaves like 

 those of our native witch hazel, but the bark scaling like that 

 of the sycamore. When the flowers open in early M'arch the 

 thickly clustered stamens peeping from the green bud scales 

 look like young wild strawberries, but by the time the stamens 

 are ready to shed pollen the filaments have lengthened and 

 pushed the anthers out from the buds. 



