424 
Mr. HORACE WALTER LEIGHTON BILLINGTON, Curator of the 
Botanic Gardens (Station) at Old Calabar, in the Niger Coast 
Protectorate, died in November, the news reaching Cannes on the 
19th. He was youngest son of the Rev. J. H. Billington, rector of 
Chalbury, Dorset. After spending three years in the service of 
the Royal Niger Company, he entered that of the Government in 
the Niger Coast Protectorate. Arriving in Old Calabar on March 
20, 1893, he created under Sir Claude Macdonald “the botanic 
station that he was just starting, ie the purpose of ascertaining 
what economic plants were su ae bof pon e non in the 
Protectorate, and to encourage ihe à em, as well 
as an erra d for them to see how neha). ies Mond be planted 
an 
His first t report, from which the above is quoted, was made to 
the Commissioner en C nsul- Meer eek oH 24, 1894. It is 
printed in the papers (Africa, No. Dp eto to Parliament in 
1895. It M duds remarkable list o f the economic plants which 
Mr. Billington had succeeded in voler together, many having 
been obtained from the West Indies, as well as the other West 
African stations. 
scheme for the establishment of the station fat been 
. presented to the Foreign Office by Kew in 1891, at the request of 
the Marquess ud Salisbu ury. The objects which Sir Claude 
acdonald hoped to coe through it are quoted in the Kew 
Bulletin for 1895 (p. 
Be e report s a dis station, the papers also contain a 
report by Mr. Billington on the botany of the country lying to the 
eastward of the iig Calabar River, and a similar report of the bank 
of the Cross Rive 
Mr. Bi lagian “had borne the irae remarkably well, m he 
resigned in July of last year, and was only awaiting the appoint- 
nt of his successor to return to En bend His untimely deat 
at "e early age of twenty-eight closes a career of much usefulness 
and promise. But as the pioneer of new cultural industries in 
the diee Protectorate it may be hoped that his memory will long 
be preserved. 
Botanical Magazine for November.—VMammea americana, 
native of the West Indies, is cultivated in tropical America for 
the sake of its edible fruit, the mammee apple. The plant in the 
Economic House at Kew flowered in 1896, but did not produce 
fruit; the figure of the latter was therefore pete: from a 
specimen in the Museum, which had been received from 
C. D. Sturge, Esq. of Montserrat. Tainia penanti ani was 
communicated to Kew by Mr. C. Curtis, F.L.S., of It 
has pale yellow sepals and petals, each with five to seven red 
nerves, and a nearly white lip. Cynorchis grandiflora, from 
Madagascar, has rather pretty flowers, and all the green age x: 
he plant are Firei with blood-red. The plant figured w 
obtained from Messrs. Lewis & Co., of Southgate. Drimia Co it 
is a new species, phina: at Kew from a bulb brought from 
Somaliland by Miss Edith Cole. Scoliopus Bigelovii is a singular 
liliaceous plant from California. The flowers give off an odour 
resembling that of decaying sea-wee 
