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We ought to have mentioned sooner Dr. Hjalmar Kiaerskou's 



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the most recent part of Dr. Warming's Symbols of the Flora of 

 Central Brazil. The author enumerates 418 species, of which, as 

 might have been expected, a large proportion are new. Collectors' 

 numbers are freely cited, there is a good index of species, and twelve 

 of the twenty-four plates are devoted to reproductions from photo- 

 graphs of the specimens described. 



We are glad to learn that the Flora of Tropical Africa is to be 

 resumed, and that vol. iv. is in active preparation. The very large 

 additions which have been made to our knowledge of African plants 

 since tbe third volume of the Flora was published in 1877 will 

 render the later part of the work much more extensive than the 

 former, to which, indeed, a supplement is already required. 



We learn from the Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information for 

 February that a portrait in oils of Samuel Frederick Gray has been 

 presented to the Eoyal Gardens, Kew. A letter from the donor, 

 Mr. S. 0. Gray (a grandson of S. F. Gray) is given, in which the 

 claim put forward by Dr. J. E. Gray to the authorship of the 

 Natural Arrangement of British Plants is characterised as "an 

 unfair statement." The writer of the notice says that Dr. J. E. 

 Gray "put it on record that he himself was practically the author 

 of the work." In this Journal for 1865, 297, and 1872, 374, will 

 be found Dr. Gray's account of the matter, as well as in a " List of 

 the Books . . . by Dr. J. E. Gray," printed for private distribution 

 in 1872. It is fair to say that in each of these accounts Dr. J. E. 

 Gray is careful to claim only the " synoptic " or systematic part of 

 the book; and as Mr. S. 0. Gray considers that "the work was a 

 joint production," there does not seem to be as much discrepancy 

 between the two statements as might at first sight appear. A good 

 deal of information regarding the authorship of the Arrangement, 

 with interesting letters from Sir J. D. Hooker and Mr. Carruthers, 

 will be found in a paper, " Les Genres Hepatiques," published by 

 M. Le Jolis in Mem. Soc. Nat. de Cherbourg, xxix. (1893). It may 

 be of interest to add that Dr. J. E. Gray's copy of the Arrange- 

 ment, the systematic portion of which has numerous additions and 

 annotations in his hand, was presented by Mr. S. 0. Gray to the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum. 



Undeb the head of "Development: a Dream of Political 

 Darwinism," Punch for Feb. 17 has an amusing poem on the 

 vicissitudes of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's political opinions, ac- 

 companied by a still funnier picture by Mr. Linley Sambourne. 



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is not an orchid ! 



The first part of the Bev. J. M. Crombie's "Monograph of 

 Lichens found in Britain: being a descriptive catalogue of the 

 species in the Herbarium of the British Museum" has just been 

 issued by the Trustees. Mr. Lister's Monograph of the Mycetozoa, 

 which will also be published by the Trustees, is ready for press, 

 and will shortly be issued. 



