256 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC, 



We learn from Xatare that Mr. Thomas Han bury has presented 

 to the Botanical Institute at Genoa the very rich collection of 

 vascular plants made by the late Prof. Willkomm, of Prague. It 

 comprises 14,472 species, the greater number being European, or 

 from the adjacent districts of Asia and Africa, It is especially rich 

 in plants of the Spanish Peninsula, and includes most of Will- 

 komm's types. 



Mr. John M. Coulter is making steady progress with his useful 

 Manual of the Phanerogams of Western Texas, the first part of which 



we noticed at p. 287 of last year's Journal. The second instalment, 

 issued June 2nd, contains the Gamopetake. 



A third fascicle of the Planted Postiance (Lausanne, Bridel: Feb. 

 1892) contains a considerable number of new species, mostly from 

 the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, and a plate of a genus of 

 Composites — Autrania Winkler & Barbey. 



The second part of Dr. Yatabe's Icovographia Flora J a panic r a 

 (Tokyo, Maruya) contains twenty plates, representing various 

 natural orders, including a new Uredine, — Triphragmium Cedrehe, 

 described by Shotaro Hori, — and a new genus of Gelidiaceous Algje 

 (AcanthopeltU) by Kintaro Okamura. The descriptions are printed 

 in English as well as in Japanese — a boon for which the European 

 botanist will be grateful. 



■ 



The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (vol. viL, 



July 7) contains an enumeration of the plants of the Pribilof 

 Island, Bering Sea, by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, with critical notes by 

 Mr. J. N. Rose. 



The large moss-herbarium of the late George Davies, of 

 Brighton, has recently been presented to the British Museum by 

 his widow. It contains upwards of 20,000 specimens, in good 

 preservation, of Mosses, Hepatics and Lichens, partly gathered by 

 Mr. Davies in Great Britain and on the Continent, and partly 

 communicated to him from N. Zealand, Samoa, India, the West 

 Indies, and America. 



Sir Edward Fey has reprinted from Knowledge a very readable 

 essay on British Mosses as a little book of 71 pages (Witherby 

 & Co.) ; it was originally delivered in the form of a lecture at the 

 Royal Institution in January, 1891. After devoting some three 

 dozen pages to the life-history, modes of reproduction, and struc- 

 ture of the Mosses, the author proceeds to the Sphagna, and points 

 out their peculiar spongy structure and the remarkable physical 

 effects which they have produced. We must refer our readers to 

 the book itself for the highly instructive account of the perpetual 

 struggle for supremacy between the ancient forests and peat bogs, 

 the traces of which are seen in a succession of forest beds overlying 

 one another in many parts of the country ; and how lakes were 

 filled up and dry land formed, and estuaries reclaimed, Sedgmoor 

 in Somerset affording an example. 



