284 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



tradict the whole generical character. " It seems a pity to have 

 retained and so to have given further currency to the untenable 

 name Kceleria splendens Druce (see Journ. Bot. 1906, 104), and 

 it might have been mentioned that the unpublished engraving 

 was reproduced in this Journal for 1905, t. 474, But as a whole 

 there is much to admire in the thoroughness and care with which 

 Mr. Druce has executed this part of the work, and British botanists 

 will find it valuable as a means of connecting pre-Linnean nomen- 

 clature with that now in use. 



The plants of the Hortus FAthamensis are next identified : we 

 note that the " Spermacoce verticiliis globosis " from the Gambia 

 which is here assigned to S. verticillata, is more generally referred 

 to S. globosa Schum. & Thonn. (see Fl. Trop. Afr. iii. 240 and Bull. 

 Herb. Boiss. 1907, 379, where Mr. F. N. Williams says it "is the 

 first plant from the colony to have been put on record "). Finally 

 we have an identification of the herbarium of the Historia Mus- 

 coram — algae, mosses, lichens, &c. Of this work the original 

 drawings are in the National Herbarium, except the last six, two 

 of which are only represented by proofs, while four, as a note in 

 the volume tells us, were "not drawn but were etched and engraved 

 immediatly upon y e copper plates." Mr. Druce says (p. xxxv) 

 11 The original drawings were said to be among Sir Joseph Banks's 

 collection, but see note 27," which states that they were " bought 

 at the sale of Robert More." There is no discrepancy in the two 

 statements, as the volume was bought by Banks at More's sale and 

 became no. 56 of his collection of MSS. 



The book concludes with an index of the names of the plants 

 mentioned ; there is no list of the various persons referred to, and 

 its absence constitutes the only defect in the volume. We are 

 surprised that the Clarendon Press should have omitted so impor- 

 tant a feature in a book of which the biographical interest consti- 

 tutes an important portion of the usefulness and value. Such an 

 index is the more necessary because the table of contents is, for a 

 work of the kind, regrettably meagre. 



Cytological Studies in Cyanophycea. By Nathaniel Lyon Gardner. 



University of California Publications. Botany. Vol. ii. No. 12, 

 pp. 237-296, plates 21-26. November 10, 1906. 



In the hope of discovering some clue to the origin of the cell- 

 nucleus, cytologists have lately manifested much interest in the 

 Cyanophycea, there being a controversy as to the presence of a 

 nucleus, its structure and functions, as to the structure of the 

 cytoplasm, the presence of chromatophores, and the nature of the 

 granules. In his recently published Cytological Studies in Cyano- 

 phycea, Dr. N. L. Gardner has done much towards settling these 

 contested questions, and to this end he collected and studied over 

 one hundred species of Cyanophycea. One of the chief difficulties 

 which he had to overcome was the elimination of the sand that 

 adheres to these small algse ; and the various methods by which he 

 effected this he describes in detail, as well as the methods of killing, 



