•±94 Scientific Intelligence. 



Greene, ^Assistant Professor of Botany in the University of 

 California, part 2, just come to hand, bears the elate of July, 1887, 

 and carries on the volume to p. 93. The opening pages explain 

 for the benefit of the uninstructed, the meaning of the convenient 

 catch name Pittonia, seemingly with some idea of retrieving an 

 injustice done by "the rising Swedish authority [who] arbitrarily 

 set aside the then old and well established name JPittonia and put 

 his own new and more cumbrous Tournefortia in its place." 

 Well, in his day we know that Linnaeus felt very much at liberty 

 in such matters, and wished the genus to bear the real cognomen 

 of the botanist it commemorated. Plumier himself dedicated his 

 genus to Josephus Pitton Tournefort, which is also the name on 

 the title page of the Institutiones. On the title pages of the 

 two earlier works it is simply Mr. Pitton Tournefort, and there is 

 no intimations that he ever used the de. So we have rather to 

 bless Linnaeus for transgressing a rule which did not then exist. 

 In a following article Professor Greene gives an account of a 

 monstrosity of Collinsia bicolor having mainly regular corollas, 

 and thereupon suppresses NuttalPs genus Tonella at once. Next 

 two new genera are made out of portions of JTrynitzkia, and Pip- 

 tocalyx is set up anew ; a good number of miscellaneous new 

 species are described, and a detailed account oiCarpenteria Cali- 

 fomica is given, quite unaware that this shrub is now rather com- 

 monly cultivated in Europe, and has been figured in the Botanical 

 Magazine, The Garden, Gardener's Chronicle, etc. That the parts 

 of the flower, at least the calyx, are sometimes 6 or 7 is stated in 

 the original description, indicated on the plate, and referred to in 

 the Botany of California, in the second volume of which a habitat 

 is given. An interesting account of a botanical excursion to the 

 Island of San Miguel concludes the number. a. g. 



S. Catalogue provisoire cles Plantes Phanerogames et Crypto- 

 games de la Basse Louisiane, Etats-Unis d'Amerique, par A. B. 

 Langlois, Pointe-a-la-hache, Louisiana. — This is a list of the 

 plants at the mouth of the Mississippi, collected and determined 

 by the Rev. M. Langlois, a parish priest whose zeal, knowledge, 

 and success in botany are notable. It is well to have a catalogue 

 of the plants of that district. Among the species which have 

 been borne to that shore from the south are Cuphea glutinosa, 

 Polygonum Meisnerianum, Cyperus Surinamensis, and Luziola 

 Peruviana. a. g. 



9. The Development of the Ostrich Fern, Onoclea Struthi- 

 opteris, by Dr. Douglass H. Campbell, is a neat memoir pub- 

 lished by the Boston Society of Natural History (iv, no. 2, 18S7) 

 pp. 35, and 4 plates, 4to, as the Walker Prize Essay of 1886. It 

 appears to be a faithful piece of detailed work. It would haA^e 

 been well to append a statement of what had already been done 

 in nearly the same field. A. G. 



10. Studi hotanici sugli Agrumi e sulle piante affini. Rome, 

 1887. By O. Penzig. — This elaborate memoir of nearly 600 

 pages of text and an atlas of 58 folio plates appeared in the 

 Annali di Agricultura, published under the direction of the Italian 



