BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 75 



connection with their MSS. and the drawings made by Sidney 

 Parkinson during their voyage, elaborated by F. P. Nodder, and in 

 part engraved. In the course of this I have had occasion to use 

 Mr. Cheeseman's book, and am struck with its scholarly character 

 a character too often conspicuously wanting in recent colonial 

 work. So far as I can judge, botany has gained rather than lost 

 by the undertaking having come into Mr. Cheeseman's hands. I 

 hope to publish later some notes resulting from an examination of the 

 Banksian material, with a complete enumeration of the drawings. 



The Manual is prefaced by a very interesting and well-executed 

 history of botanical discovery in New Zealand, in which brief 

 accounts are given of the various investigations from the time of 

 Cook's first visit to the present. In connection with the collections 

 made by Banks and Solander during Cook's visit, it may perhaps be 

 well to say here that it has been decided by the Trustees of the 

 British Museum not to proceed with the publication of the plates 

 and MSS. connected with these. In the Appendix, besides the 

 list of introduced plants already mentioned, are a synoptical key to 

 the orders ; a long list of Maori plant-names compiled from various 

 sources ; a useful glossary ; and a number of additions and corrections. 



James Britten, 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on Dec. 6th, 1906, a 

 paper by Prof. A. J. Ewart, F.L.S., on * The Physiology of the 

 Museum Beetle, Anthrenus museorum (Linn.) Fabr." was read. The 

 mischief wrought by this species in the National Herbarium at Mel- 

 bourne is great, and is only kept in check by systematic use of a 

 chamber impregnated by the vapour of carbon-bisulphide, in which 

 the plants are placed for several days at a time. The use of corro- 

 sive sublimate is not advisable owing to the grave danger to health 

 in a dust-forming atmosphere. The most remarkable feature of the 

 larva is their power of feeding on dry material, with less than 9 per 

 cent, of water ; and yet these lame exhibit the usual amount in 

 their structure, averaging 70 per cent. The author suggests that 

 the water may be chemically derived from decomposition of the 

 carbo-hydrate food they consume. Bacteria are present in abund- 

 ance in the alimentary canals of these grubs, and oxidize the 

 carbon of the food where no transpiration of water is possible. 



At the meeting of the same Society on Dec. 20th, Mr. N. E. 

 Brown exhibited a photograph and dried specimens of Fochea 

 capensis Endl., a plant of considerable interest on account of its 

 great rarity and its apparently great longevity. It was originally 

 described and figured by N. J. Jacquin, a hundred years ago, in his 

 Fragmmta Botanica, p. 31, t. 84, f. 5, as Cynancluim crupwn, from 

 a plant which had been introduced from South Africa, and culti- 

 vated in the Imperial Garden at Schonbrunn. In 1888 Endlicher, 



