450 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXIV. 
Dr. Schumann contributes an article on the art of collecting cacti 
to the Votizb/att of the Berlin Botanical Garden of December 29. 
Parsonsia paddisoni, a new apocynaceous plant yielding large 
edible tubers, is described by R. T. Baker in No. 95 of the Proceed- 
ings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, which contains 
several other papers of botanical interest. 
The botany of New Zealand receives fourteen contributions, 
covering various groups of flowering plants and cryptogams, and 
abundantly illustrated, in the twenty-third volume of the Zyansactions 
and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, the frontispiece for 
which is a portrait of the veteran botanist Colenso. 
A study of the seed dispersal of Pinus sylvestris and Betula alba, 
the results of which are published by Robert Smith in the Annals 
of Scottish Natural History for January, shows that the seeds of the 
former have been effectively carried by the wind to a distance of 
886 yards, and of the latter to a distance of 489 yards, from the 
parent trees, 
The most imposing brochure of the first volume of the Proceedings 
of the Washington Academy of Sciences, the publication of which has 
just been concluded, and the form, typography, illustration, and 
make-up of which constitute a model worthy of the study of all 
publishing bodies, is devoted to a description of a new genus and 
twenty new species of fossil cycadean trunks from the Jurassic of 
Wyoming, by Professor Lester F. Ward. 
The geographical distribution of Solanum carolinense, Tribulus 
terrestris, and 7: maximus, is discussed by Pammel in Bulletin No. 42 
of the Iowa Agricultural College. 
The lime content of the soil, which plays an important róle in the 
growth of certain plants, has been carefully worked out about 
Cognac by Guillon, whose results, with especial reference to viticul- 
ture, are given in the Revue de Viticulture for January 6, with the aid 
of a colored map. : 
The * Report on the Progress of Pharmacy," in the Proceedings 
of the American Pharmaceutical Association for 1899, contains a large 
amount of information, tabulated by plant families, which is not 
likely to be found so readily elsewhere by botanical students. 
. The results of all available American chemical analyses of nuts, 
and a discussion of the value of nuts as food for man, are contained 
in Bulletin No. 54 of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. 
