BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 143 



The Annual Eeport of the New Jersey State Museum occupies 

 19 pages of the volume so entitled, the remaining 809 being 

 devoted to an enumeration of The Plants of Southern Neio 

 Jersey, by Mr. Witmer Stone, with especial reference to the flora 

 of the pine barrens and the geographical distribution of the species. 

 So far as we can judge, this is very carefully and usefully done. 

 The enumeration is prefaced by an interesting essay giving the 

 history of the knowledge of New Jersey botany and a general 

 summary of the botany of the pine barrens. The flora is not 

 descriptive, but for all the larger genera full keys to the species 

 are given, and interesting ecological and geographical notes are 

 scattered all through the book. There are 129 plates, many of 

 them containing several species : we fear the specimens depicted 

 are in many cases too fragmentary to be useful. This applies 

 especially to the figures of grasses, rushes, and allied plants, some 

 of which — e. g. the fourteen single spikes of as many species of 

 Eleocharis, figured (with four other plants) on plate 17 — appear to 

 us to serve no useful purpose. The figures from photographs from 

 actual growing specimens are interesting ; those from water-colour 

 drawings by Mr. H. E. Stone undoubtedly lose much in the half- 

 tone reproductions, and his line-drawings are hard : nowhere do 

 we find any dissections. The author has been working at the 

 flora since 1889, and his volume embodies a vast amount of in- 

 formation. 



The Journal of the College of Science of the Imperial Univer- 

 sity of Tokyo (xxxii. part 1) is devoted to a Bevisio Aceracearum 

 Japonicartmi, by G. Koidsumi. Twenty-nine species are described, 

 many of them — e. g. A. japonicwn, A. pictum, and A. palmatum — 

 with numerous varieties, subvarieties, and forms. Three species 

 are new — A. Morrisonense Hayata, A. ruhescens Hayata, A. shira- 

 saivanum Koidz. The monograph is illustrated by thirty-three 

 excellent plates, as well as by woodcuts in the text. 



Mr. James Saunders contributes to the Transactions of the 

 Hertfordshire Nattcral History Society (vol. xiv. part 2) an in- 

 teresting paper on the distribution of the Mycetozoa in the South 

 Midlands. He gives additional records for Herts, Beds, Bucks, 

 Middlesex, and Essex, a table showing the species which have 

 been recorded for these counties, the numbers being respectively 

 66, 104, 43, 27, and 74 ; the total number of species for the whole 

 area is 108. The large proportion recorded for Beds is of course 

 due to Mr. Saunders's own observations in that county ; the four 

 not recorded for Beds are Badhamia populina (Essex), Physarum 

 psittacinum (Herts and Bucks), Crihraria violacea (Bucks), and 

 Trichia favog inea (Middlesex) . 



The Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa for 

 February gives an account of a vegetable pest which is causing 

 much trouble, and for the eradication of which no satisfactory 

 method has so far been discovered. This is Opuntia pusilla, a 

 plant of which was thrown from a garden into the Kaga river in 



