292 General Notes. [ April, 
number, the gross weight being considerably less. He found 
also that the leaves were obviously injured by the flesh food and 
that the power of the plants to resist the winter was diminished. 
He thinks the epithet “carnivorous” to be inappropriate. On the 
other hand, Von Heldrich, according to the Fournal of the Royal 
Microscopical Society, has found a Pinguicula on the upper side 
of whose leaves are a large number of bodies of insects in an 
earlier or later stage of digestion by the glands plentifully sprin- 
kled over its surface. This is the first insectivorous plant yet 
recognized in Greece. By the will of the late Stephen C. Olney, 
of Providence, R. I., his herbarium of from 8000 to 10,000 spe- 
cies of plants, and his library of botanical works. numbering 
some four hundred volumes, and an excellent microscope, with 
$10,000 for the increase of the library and herbarium, have been 
bequeathed to Brown University. The library contains many 
costly works. The herbarium comprises, besides a fine series of 
Carices, on which the donor bestowed much labor, many Western 
and South-western plants named by Gray, Cuban plants, Austin’s, 
Sullivant and Lesquereux’s mosses, and good series of algæ and 
lichens. The author’s botanical labors were recognized some 
years since in the establishment of the genus Olneya. The Col- 
lege also receives from him the sum of $25,000 for a professorship 
of natural history. - 
ZOOLOGY.? 
Seite six Days At SEA, IN AN OPEN BOAT, CRUISING FOR 
ALES.—Wee left San Francisco on a small steam propeller 
hare as the Rocket; length about thirty-five feet, eight feet 
beam, and about five and a-half tons register. 
The day we left being fine, we had a very pleasant trip as far as 
Point Reyes, which is about ‘thirty-five miles north of San Fran- 
cisco, but saw nothing of importance on the way, except now an 
then numerous albicore and the porpoises sporting in the sea. 
We anchored in Drake’s bay for the night. Early on the follow- 
ing morning we steamed up and took a cruise outside, and in a 
few hours heard the familiar Soba “There she’ blows,” and 
the captain, with spy-glass in hand, answering, “ Where-away ? ” 
with the answer, “ Just on the lee bow, about half a mile ahead !” 
Getting everything in order, we steered for him, and soon saw 
several whales swimming very fast and going northwards. Now 
one approaches which proves to be a sulphur bottom whale (Si- 
baldius sulphureus Cope), seventy-five to eighty feet long, just 
under the bow of the boat, in fact almost too close for a shot. 
The captain fired one of the well-known Fletcher, Suits & Co. 
California whaling rockets, and patent bomb lance. This apparatus 
consists of a gun-metal cylinder filled with a peculiar composition 
made only by themselves, to which is attached, in front, a bomb 
+ Tae oo of Ornithology and Mammalogy are conducted tiy Dr. Eiryr = 7 
COUES, tA e 
