BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 151 
declining to publish the paper without alteration; but the ob- 
servations on the plants im situ are valuable and interesting, and 
r. Wallace’s remarks bring the position oe this very curious 
subject up to date. It is to be regretted, however, that some 
es of ya referred ag Spruce to Tococa should now be 
m 
referred in Gen, Pl. iii. 564 to Limnobiwm, but the name cheto- 
spora is pera Uey 2 transcribed echinospora and in that form it 
appears in the Kew Index. 
The incidental cece to those iene whom he was more or 
less shy se ge ted are of intere Thus of William 
reach a hundred and fifty, for he shows no signs e yet 
‘‘one of the most amiable of men, an oii a " a 210)— 
we read that he had “a drunken (and worse) wife hanging on to 
him for forty years, who burns his dried plants whenever she can 
get hold of them, so that he can keep no herbarium, and has often 
had to struggle with absolute want.” This, as Mr. Wallace says, 
explains why ‘‘a man with (apparently) ear fine opportunities 
and who was so interested in botany, did so little. 
If we seek for an ae of the gene oh results of Spruce’s 
work, none better und than that appended by Bentham 
to a statement (ietated beh not published) of the results of his 
travels drawn up by Sir Clements Markham in 1864 :—* His 
researches are the vegetation of the interior of South Aridi 
have been the most important that we have had since the days of 
Humboldt: not merely for the number of species he See) collected, 
amounting to upwards of 7000, but for the number of new generic 
forms with which he has enriched science; for his fivvustigntioris 
i he economic uses of the plants of the countries he visited ; 
and attached to the specimens preserved ; which specimens 
have been transmitted to this country, rhe complete sets deposited 
in the national herbarium at 
A aa eae beers NEWS, de. 
bee oin sis po 
Dr. Stapf has succeeded te. the "Keoporship veonted by Mr, 
