Botany. 77 



the editoral staff has sustained another loss in the premature 

 death of Professor Prajstl, who passed away on the 24th of 

 February. Professor Engler will now have entire charge of the 

 undertaking. Although this additional care must be a heavy 

 burden on Professor Engler, it ensures for the volumes even 

 greater unity of design and accomplishment than is possible under 

 a double editorship. g. l. g. 



3. Rainfall and Leaf-form. — Professor Stahl of Jena has 

 published some interesting studies which he carried on at the 

 mountain station of the Botanic Garden at Buitenzorg, Java. The 

 mountain station is at Tjibodas, about 4,500 feet above sea-level, 

 on a part of the volcanic Gedeh. No one who has seen the sud- 

 denness with which the rain which falls in the tropics is disposed 

 of by the luxuriant foliage of a hillside can fail to be interested 

 in Stahl's investigation. Some of the adaptations are among the 

 most interesting in the whole range of vegetable forms, especially 

 those which were connected with the rapid drying of the leaf 

 itself in a comparatively moist atmosphere. 



Professor Stahl has also busied himself with an examination of 

 some of the means by which tropical plants protect themselves 

 against the very heavy blows from rain-drops in the tropics. A 

 good review of the paper, which appears in the Annals of the 

 Buitenzorg Garden, is given in the 10th number (May 16) of 

 Botanische Zeitung. g.^l. g. 



4. Turgescence and transpiration in fleshy plants y by Ephrem 

 Aubert, (Ann. Sc. Nat., vii Ser., T. 16). — The researches of this 

 experimenter have brought out in a very clear manner certain re- 

 lations which exist between the occurrence of vegetable acids in 

 some fleshy plants and their slow transpiration. The fact that 

 fleshy plants possess, especially in the dark, a notable amount of 

 some organic acid, has been long known. To this acid, as it oc- 

 curs in Orassulacece, Mayer gave the name of isomalic. In this 

 Natural Order, it is associated with tartaric acid and tannin. In 

 Ficoidece, the acid is oxalic, while in Cactacea3 there is oxalic 

 acid together with gums which later differ in their behavior to 

 water, some being soluble, and others merely swelling in water. 



The author concludes that the curve of water transpired by 

 different parts of a fleshy plant has its minimum corresponding 

 to the maximum content of organic acids and gums. Of course 

 this resolves itself into the physical relations which depend on 

 the effect of dissolved substances to retard evaporation. 



G. L. G. 



5. On the origin of Endogens from Exogens. — Rev. George 

 Henslow, whose interesting work on the Origin of Floral 

 Structures is well known to our readers, has a suggestive paper in 

 the May (loth), number of the Journ. of the Linnean Society, on 

 the vexed question of the relation in point of time between 

 dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous orders. The subject is 

 discussed from histological and morphological points of view and 

 the following conclusions are reached. 



