494 Scientific Intelligence. 
collections in distant expeditions. The knowledge and the tact 
they may here acquire should make all the difference between 
a neat and scientifically valuable collection and one which is 
repulsive and worthless. 
If we rightly understand it, Mr. Ward’s plant-poison is not 
strong enough. e recommend that the alcohol should be satu- 
rated with corrosive sublimate, and then, if need be on account of 
efflorescence, that just a little aleohol be added. And = alcohol 
should be of the strongest. This appendix covers about the same 
ground as does Professor Bailey’s Botanist’s Hand-boak, Se 
in the preceding number of this Journal. Both are excellent, a 
needed, and we hope will be widely disseminated. In view of 
this, it may be expected that the appendix will be separately 
issued and be distributed by the Smithsonian Institution. a. 4. 
8. Meilleurs Blés ro sean et Culture des principales 
Variatés des Froments d’ Hiver et de a ee own, 
Anprieux.—This is a handsome Finer 4to, of 175 pages of 
letter-press and 66 plates, each one admirably repr cea in ‘the 
natural size and colors, two heads of each sort of wheat and some 
separate rains; not ‘only all the best varieties of Triticum 
sativum, but also of the cultivated spelts and other wheat species,, 
zr. turgidum, durum, Polonicum, Spelta, Amyleum, and monococ-- 
cum. Besides the details for each variety, in a page accompany- 
ing the figure, and some general considerations, there is an inter- 
esting chapter on the classification of the seven types or species 
and the many varieties of the common wheat. As this work is a 
practical one, only the — sorts pea to the title) are 
here described and illustra We may add that this volume 
comes from the collections ae svsitdinations of three generations, 
son and grandson having cont wae es iene and the studies 
i 
his Methodical Se of Wheats in 1850, and died in 1860,, 
since which ork has been prosecuted in the same <i by 
the present ee Fas Vilmorin. 
9. The Office of Resinous Matters in Plants ; by Head i 
Vries. <A paper in the Archives Néerlandaises, vol. Xvii, 1882.— 
The extract fills 24 pages, 8vo. It has been difficult to make even 
a plausible conjecture of the uses of the “ proper juices” of plants. 
In their production a large amount of nutritive material is con- 
sumed; and for the most part they are stored up irretrievably in 
the e pla ant, not being reconverted into nutritive material. This. 
gave some color to the old idea that they are excrement oy 
But, besides that under normal conditions they are not excreted, 
why should a pine-tree convert such an amount of its nasiialaved 
ternary matters into turpentine, which is merely to be excreted ? 
Or, if it be a bye-product, what useful production or beneficial end 
attends the production? It excrementitious, the tree should be 
benefitted by drawing it off. But, as De ries rem marks, and as 
the owners of the trees very well Puow, the process is injurious, 
and if followed up is destructive. It goes almost without s ayia 
