21 
Kirk's Studént’s Flora of New Zealand.—The death of Professor 
T. Kirk, of New Zealand, was announced in the Aew Bulletin 
(1898, p. 51), tof, also, reference was made to his unfinished 
work bearing the above title. Since then Sir James Hector, 
Director of the Geologic a fhe of New Zealand, and of the 
New Zealand Institute, has sent Sir Joseph Hooker “ clean sheets ” 
of the work, so far as it has been printed off ; and they have been 
Bent by him to Kew. It is gratifying to learn from the 
me source that this fragment will be published, and that 
pa botanist will probably be commissioned to write a Flora 
of the country on a less : comprehensive plan, Kirk’s Flora is, as 
far as completed, admirable in nee. and, as far as possible, 
exhaustive in treatment. It is a ma of deep regret that the 
author did not li 
with Kirk’s local, botanical, and literary skill. But what is more 
imperatively required, in the first place, is a handy und cheap 
ook, in which the plants are described in familiar language, 
without any attempt on the part of the author to See d ; 
that is to say, to discriminate critical forms, or for 
complete d of rare species in order to. be TUR to fully 
describe the 
The aiii of  Kirk's Flora comprises ihe orders 
Ranunculacez to Ooa oita. covering 363 large octavo pages ; or, 
more space than the whole of the flowering plants and ferns 
occupy in Hooker’s Handbook. It is true that the wire 
includes namaa introduced plants; but many of peer a 
so abundant and so widely spread that they form 
portant, or at least a conspicuous part of the aviation in 
certain districts. Some, indeed, pervade the whole country, 
and it is as d ry for ihe student to have means of re 
them as the rarer aboriginal Lie To the beginner they are 
as much natives as the others. In Kirk's work the names and 
descriptions of the introduced plants are printed. in different 
type from the rest. 
The Ferns of North-Western India.—Mr. C. W. Hope, late of 
= ee Works Department, Government of India, who devoted 
of his leisure time while in India to the study of joie: has, 
die his retirement, continued his studies at Kew, and is 
eve of publishing a detailed account of all the species inhabiting 
the North-Western Provinces and adjoining territories. This 
partially descriptive enumeration will shortly appear n the 
Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, and will be 
illustrated by a number of plates 
Para Rubber in Penang.—A brief reference to the experimental 
production of this rubber was given in the Kew Bulletin for 1898, 
p- 273. Two samples have since been received from ‚Curtis, 
the. Assistant Superintendent of Forests, both of which- were 
