Botany and Zoology. 23 1 



Sarkinite, as stated by A. Sjogren (Geol. For. Forh., vii, 724), 

 occurs massive with two cleavages but the crystalline system 

 unknown. The color is light reel, and the luster greasy. An 

 analysis by Lundstrom gave the results (II) below. The locality 

 is Pajsberg, Sweden. 



As 2 5 Sb 9 6 P 2 5 MnO FeO CaO MgO PbO H 2 C0 2 insoL 

 I. 39-04 1-21 — 50-18 tr 2-88 0-75 — 3-15 3"5] — =10072 

 II. 41-60 — 0-21 51-60 0-13 T40 0"98 0'25 3-06 0-76 0-38=100-37 



TJintahite is an asphalt-like hydrocarbon from the Uintah 

 Mts., Utah. It is obtained in masses several inches in diameter, 

 brittle and breaking with a conchoidal fracture. Its hardness is 2 

 to 2'5, specific gravity 1*065 to T075 ; the color black and lus- 

 trous. It fuses easily in the flame of a candle, burning with a 

 brilliant flame like sealing-wax and like this giving a clean sharp 

 impression of a seal. It dissolves in heavy petroleum, also in oil 

 of turpentine when warmed ; but not by ordinary alcohol nor by 

 ether when in fragments. It forms with melted wax a hard black 

 mixture, resembling " burnt wax." — W. P. Blake in The Engi- 

 neering and Mining Journal, Dec. 26, 1885. 



III. Botany and Zoology. 



1. Contributions to the Flora of the Peruvian Andes, with 

 Remarks on the History and Origin of the Andean Flora ; by 

 John Ball, F.R.S., M.K.I. A., F.L.S., &c. Extr. Journal of the 

 Linnean Society, Botany, xxii, pp. 1-64. Read November, and 

 published in December, 1885. — The personal observations and the 

 collections upon which this essay was founded were made in 

 April, 1882, in an excursion by railway from Lima up to Chicla, 

 which although only 75 miles in distance, is at the elevation of 

 12,220 English feet. Much to his surprise, Mr. Ball found that at 

 this elevation, he had not yet reached the alpine region, which 

 really begins about 2000 feet higher. This is three or four 

 thousand feet higher than Grisebach had placed it, on the author- 

 ity of Tschudi and Humboldt: yet is only what we should expect, 

 since the proper alpine vegetation of the Rocky Mountains in 

 lat. 40° N., hardly descends below 10,000 feet, and the oscilla- 

 tions of temperature in the Peruvian Andes are small. 



Equally mistaken, Mr. Ball suspects, must be the common view 

 that the flora of the tropical Andes is scanty in species as com- 

 pared with high mountain floras in general. He makes some 

 comparisons from which he inters that the paucity is apparent 

 rather than real, and may be attributed mainly to the paucity of 

 collections in the Andes, since these vast regions have been visited 

 at very few points and far between. 



About a quarter of the Andean phsenogams is of Composite, 

 which is double their ratio in N. America, which again is greater 

 than that of any other continent. The characteristic and the 

 most abundant Andean Composite are the Mutisiacem. Mr. 

 Ball, referring to Bentham's indication of the complex affinities of 



