528 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXII. 
BOTANY. ° 
The Ninth Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden. —It is 
doubtful whether the word “report” best describes the annual 
collection of original papers issued from the Missouri Botanical 
Garden. It is true each volume is prefaced by a brief statement of 
the financial condition, chief expenditures, and general progress of 
the Garden, but the body of the present “ report,” like most of its 
predecessors, is made up of articles upon research work, in fact of 
acta, a term for which, unfortunately, the English language pos- 
sesses no very satisfactory equivalent. The more important events 
in the development of the Garden, during 1897, have been the erec- 
tion of a new range of greenhouses; the acquisition of 2% acres 
of additional land, and the purchase of the Redfield, Joor, Jermy, 
and Boehmer & Ludwig herbaria, together making an increment of 
about 30,000 specimens to the already extensive herbarium of the 
Garden. A peculiar feature in the report is an attempt to give a 
money valuation to the specimens in the herbarium, the value fixed 
upon being 1o cents per mounted sheet. This, it is true, approxi- 
mates the ordinary commercial rate for recent collections, but in 
large and well-organized herbaria, in which considerable groups of 
plants have received expert identification of monographers, and 
many are, as Dr. Gray used to say, “embalmed in synonymy,” it 
would certainly seem that the value, if given at all, might fairly be 
placed at a considerably higher figure. The growth of the library 
of the Garden has been even more remarkable than that of the 
herbarium, since no less than 7756 books and pamphlets have been 
secured during 1897. 
The principal scientific papers in the report are: “ A revision of 
the American Lemnacee occurring north of Mexico ” (already noticed 
in these pages), by C. H. Thompson; “Notes upon Salix longipes 
Shuttl. and its relations to S. nigra Marsh.,” by Dr. N. M. Glatfelter; 
“ Revision of the genus Capsicum,” by H. C. Irish; “ List of crypto- 
gams collected in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Grand Cayman,” by 
Prof. A. S. Hitchcock; “ Agave Washingtonensis and other Agaves 
flowering in the Washington Botanical Garden in 1897,” by Dr. J. N. 
Rose; and “The species of Cacti commonly cultivated under the 
generic name Anhalonium,” by C. H. Thompson. 
Especially noteworthy among these papers is Mr. Irish’s mono- 
graph of Capsicum. An intensive examination of this well-known 
genus (which yields the various forms of red pepper known as 
