234 
Completion of the Flora of British India.—With the exception of 
2 general index, now almost ready for the press, this great work has been 
brought to a conclusion by the issue of the 22nd part, containing the 
remainder cf the grasses. Sir Joseph Hooker will receive the con- 
gratulations of all botanists on — of a task to which he has 
devoted the greater part of the last quarter of a century, to say nothing 
of previous years of travel and preliminary labour. It would not be too 
much to say that it has occupied the best part of 50 years of his life, as 
he left England for India in 1847. The entire work will consist of 
seven octavo volumes, averaging 775 pages each, including the general 
index of about 42,000 names. "The grasses alone number 850 species, 
belonging to 150 genera, and, as nit bee + mentions before, the 
synonymy is perhaps more copious and ues ed than that of any other 
amily. Owing to the wide distribution of most of the genera, and many 
of the species of nd = volume treating of them has a general as 
well as a special v 
Annals of t he Royal Botanic —— Caleutta.—'The second part 
of the fifth and the entire seventh volume have just been issued 
mienne The former consists of désertdutis ker figures of “a 
century of new and rare Indian plants" by P. Brühl, of the Baal 
Educational Service, and Dr. G. King, superintendent of the Calcutta 
garden, Mr. Briihl is favourably known to botanists by his De 
Ranunculaceis Indicis Disputationes, and his part in the present work 
consists wholly of Ranunculacee ; not new species, it is true, but a 
very careful elaboration of the critical forms of old species. optis 
ospriocarpa is the only one described as new. ‘Twenty-seven plates are 
devoted to this part. Dr. King's niin mainly of interesting novelties 
deseribed in his Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula, an 
belonging to the hes Violacee, Ponce, Guttifere, Dipterocarpea, 
and Artocarpee, 
The seventh WOltitie of the Annals is a fully illustrated monograph 
of the Bambusee of British India, by J. S. Gamble, Conservator of 
Forests. Mr. Gamble has been working at Indian bamboos for some 
years, and his monograph is an immeuse advance on previous knowledge 
of this important group. The account of the Bambusee in Hooker’s 
Flora of British a was “drawn up almost verbatim” from it. 
One hundred and fiftee ecies are described (increased to 117 in the 
Flora of British India), belonging t o 15 genera, including one new one. 
Only a few species of bamboos flower annually, and in most s species the 
flowering seasons come ve at long intervals. Mr. Gamble gives all 
the information it was possible to — on this and other points, but 
adds that there is much yet to be learnt. 
