296 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VOL. XXXII. 
Mr. C. A. Purpus, who for some time has been active in intro- 
ducing the choicer species of our Western and Pacific coast vegetation 
into European gardens, contributes to the Mitteilungen der Deutschen 
Dendrologischen Geselischaft for 1897 an account of his travels in the 
southern Sierras of California and the Argus and Madurango ranges. 
Eriogonum, one of the more puzzling genera of Apetala, is enriched 
by the addition of twenty-two new species, in a paper by Dr. Small, 
published in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for January. 
In the same article, Oxytheca parishii Parry is made the type of a 
new genus, Acanthoscyphus, 
The tree opuntias of the United States form the subject of an 
interesting short article in the February number of the Botanical 
Gazette, by Professor Toumey, whose opportunities for the study and 
cultivation of cacti, in Arizona, are unrivaled. 
A paper on some biographical difficulties in botany, — some of 
which apparently might be escaped by carrying the application of the 
principle of priority to Tournefort’s work, instead of stopping with 
the species Plantarum of Linnzus— read before the Botanical 
Society of America in Toronto last summer, by Prof. E. L. Greene, 
has been reprinted from volume iv of the Catholic University Bulletin, 
of Washington. 
M. Cardot, in the Bulletin de la Société d’ Histoire Naturelle d Autun 
for 1897, publishes a Répertoire Sphagnologique, an alphabetical 
catalogue of all known species and varieties of Sphagnum, with 
indication of synonymy, bibliography, and geographical distribution. 
The pamphlet, which is separately paged, contains 200 pages, octavo. 
The Botanical laboratory of the University of Siena has begun the 
publication of a new journal,’ the first fascicle of which, for January, 
1898, contains a report on the botanical garden and museum for the 
scholastic year 1896-97, and a number of scientific papers, chiefly 
on fungi, —a group with which Italian botanists are very largely 
occupied. 
PALEONTOLOGY. 
Pleistocene Flora.— For a number of years the Pleistocene flora 
of Canada has formed the subject of special investigation, chiefly by 
Sir Wm. Dawson and Professor Penhallow, of Montreal, and Prof. 
1 Bull. lab. bot. R. Univ. Siena. Redatto del Dott. Fl. Tassi. 
