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374 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vou XXXII. 
The rupestris section of Selaginella, as represented in the United 
States, forms the subject of a paper by Professor Underwood in the 
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for March, in which six species 
and one variety are described as new, and two previously described 
forms are resurrected as of specific rank. 
Prof. E. A. Burt publishes in the Botanical Gazette for March a use- 
ful paper on collecting and preparing fleshy fungi for the herbarium. 
In the fourth Heft of the current volume of Engler’s Botanische 
Jahrbiicher, Professor Engler brings to a conclusion his series of 
“ Beiträge zur Flora von Africa.” The contributors to this conclud: 
ing paper are Engler, Hoffmann, and Kränzlin. 
Professor Spegazzini, in the Revista of the La Plata agricultural 
and veterinary Faculty for August and September last, publishes an 
annotated list of something over two hundred species of Patagonian 
plants, several of which are described as new, under the title “ Primi- 
tiæ floræ Chubutensis.” 
A novel local flora is the Fora urbica pavese, published by Tra- 
verso in the Nuovo Giornale Botanico Italiano for January, and enu- 
merating an even century of flowering plants and ferns which grow 
spontaneously in the city of Pavia. 
The third Bulletin of the New York Botanical Garden contains 
an interesting series of reports on the organization and administra- 
tion of the establishment, a surprisingly long list of plants cultivated 
in 1897, and descriptions and illustrations of the proposed plant 
houses and museum building. The sites of the garden and the 
proposed zoological park are indicated on a simple outline map of 
Bronx Park. 
Under the title of Zhe Cactus Journal, a new monthly, devoted 
exclusively to cacti and other succulent plants, largely from the point 
of view of the cultivation of such plants, has been started in London. 
The first number, for February, 1898, is illustrated by two well- 
executed gelatine prints, from photographs, illustrating a number 
of interesting cacti. 
From a study of the paper of a Hebrew document from the syna- 
gogue of Old Cairo, Mr. Dawson concludes that as far back as the 
year 1038,—the date assigned to the manuscript, — the process 
of manufacturing paper from the fibers of the flax plant was both 
known and employed.! 
1 Annals of Botany, 12: 111-115, March, 1898. 
