AND THE ZOOLOGY OF CHINA 63 



Zygnemaceae with a very rare and new kind of genus 

 Spirogyra. Among Volvocineae family only 12 forms were 

 defined, but there must be mere. Of various Protococcales, 

 the majority of which it is necessary to consider as cosmo- 

 politans, more than 100 forms were found. Finally it should 

 be mentioned that among the remaining green-algae, there 

 are about 60 kinds and out of this number the following — 

 Protosiphon botryoides, Sphaeroplea annulina are worthy of 

 attention. The Characeae here are represented only by one 

 — Char a fragilis and Diatomaceae in 161 forms, among which 

 are some interesting and rare kinds. One of these is — 

 Surirella Pa7itoschkii found in the Amur near Habarovsk. 

 This beautiful kind was first described in 1913 from a 

 Japanese collection by Meister. The diatomes plankton of 

 the Amur and Sungari rivers recall the plankton of the 

 European rivers and chiefly consist of — Melosira islandica 

 and subsp. halvetica, M. italica, Asterionella gracillima, etc. 



The algae just described were studied from numerous 

 collections gathered near the railway line in North and 

 Middle Manchuria and mostly in the environs of Harbin: 

 and also from collections of the Amur river made by W. K. 

 Soldatow during his Ichthyological expeditions. The mater- 

 ials were examined in Petrograd and some at Harbin and the 

 above collections are now studied by zoologistes in . the 

 zoologic museum of the Academy of Science in Petrograd. 



IX. — On Some Chinese Medicinal Plants 

 of the Far East. 



Dr. Gr. A. Stuart's book 5 on Chinese medicinal plants 

 which appeared eight years ago contains almost all known 

 plants existing on uhis question in China. But, as is well 

 known, in the Chinese special medical literature on which 

 Stuart 'principally relied, there are some plants whose botan- 

 ical properties are not always fully described. Beside the 

 medical plants mentioned in the Stuart book from Manchuria 

 and North China it is necessary to indicate some other not 

 very well known plants not mentioned in these leading works, 



1 Siberian acacia (Caragana chamlagu Lam.) This 

 carasana is very common in all the Far East on hillocks. 

 It is a dwarf shrub covered with spines, with plumose leaves 

 and large yellow flowers. It is used in Chinese medicine as 

 a tonic. 



5 -Chinese Materia Medica (vegetable kingdom"), Rev. G. A. 

 Stuart, M.D. ; Shanghai, 1911. 



