170 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vou. XXXIII. 
ment on those of his master, which have been described to me in 
recent years by a number of people who have studied at Minster, 
and which are certainly very crude, then we are fully warranted in 
calling in question the results. One is the more inclined to do this 
because in another paragraph we are told that: “ Almost all bacteria, 
which I have had in cultivation in recent years, form a branched 
mycelium in course of time, especially all bacilli.” We are also 
rendered suspicious by the statement that species of Aspergillus and 
Mucor may appear in the form of ameeba. It is possible, of course, 
that bacteria are only “incompletely known fungi,” but up to this 
time the evidence is certainly not very conclusive, and to the writer 
it seems not at all improbable that they may have had quite a dif- 
ferent origin — at least many of them. Erwins F Suir 
Dr. Bolander. — In Ærythea for October, 1898, Willis L. Jepson 
writes interestingly of Dr. Henry N. Bolander, botanical explorer, 
who died in Portland, Oregon, Aug. 28, 1897. He was born in Ger- 
many, but most of his life was spent in Ohio and on the Pacific coast. 
He was educated for a clergyman, but through the influence of Leo 
Lesquereux his energies were turned into scientific channels. The 
article is accompanied by a half-tone picture of the botanist. Thirty- 
seven species of flowering plants were named after Dr. Bolander. 
E F. S. 
The Costa Rica Flora.—The second volume of the Primitie 
flore Costaricensis, begun by Pittier and Durand, is continued by 
the first-named author alone. But Part I of this volume, concerned 
with the Polypetalz, is from the pen of Capt. John Donnell Smith, 
whose work on the flora of Guatemala is everywhere well known. As 
might be expected, several species are here described for the first 
time. Descriptions of a number of species previously published in 
the Botanical Gazette are reprinted, for obvious reasons. 
Urban’s West Indian Flora.!— The first fascicle of this work, 
with which Dr. Urban has been known to be occupied for some years 
past, reaches page 192, and is entirely devoted to a botanical bibli- 
ography of the West Indies. The botanical treatment itself is awaited 
with much eagerness. T. 
rban, Symbolæ Antillanæ seu fundamenta floræ Indiæ occidentalis, 1. 
1. Berolini, Fratres Borntraeger, 1898. 
