No. 380.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 601 
Dept. of Agriculture, Division of Botany, Dec. 1, 1897. 21 pp. 
21 figs. Free on application. 
“Collecting and Preparing Fleshy Fungi for the Herbarium,” by 
Prof. Edward A. Burt, Botanical Gazette, March, 1898. 8vo, 14 pp. 
1 pl. Reprints of this may be had from Cambridge Bot. Supply Co., 
Cambridge, Mass. 
“ Some Edible and Poisonous Fungi,” by Dr. W. G. Farlow, Profes- 
sor of Cryptogamic Botany in Harvard University. Bulletin No. 15, 
Division of Vegetable Physiology and Pathology. U.S. Dept. of 
Agriculture, Washington, D. C., June, 1898. 8vo, 17 pp., 10 litho- 
graphic plates, one colored. Free on application. This latter pub- 
lication, in particular, should be in the hands of every one who 
desires to distinguish wholesome from noxious species. To this end 
a large edition has been issued and the paper has also been included 
in the yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1897. 
ERWIN F. SMITH. 
Merrill on Lower California.!——The attention of botanists who 
are interested in cecology is called to this paper on account of a 
number of very interesting plates illustrating the strange vegetation 
of this peninsula. Very odd and striking are the pictures represent- 
ing three of the common trees of this region, viz., Cereus pringlei, 
Fouguiera columnaris, and Veatchia cedrocensis, the latter known as 
elephant wood. They are desert species which have become pro- 
foundly modified to adapt themselves to an adverse climate. Each 
one illustrates the extreme flexibility of living things, and at the same 
time speaks volumes regarding their hard, age-long struggle for 
existence, during which to hoard water every transpiring organ has 
been thrown away or reduced to the smallest possible compass. 
Concerning the Fouquiera, which reaches a height of 40 feet and a 
base diameter of 1 5 to 18 inches, Professor Merrill says: “A landscape 
of these pole-like forms, with their thorny branches and few small, 
brittle, thick, yellow-green leaves is weird in the extreme, and par- 
ticularly so about dusk. Dry, hot, leafless, noiseless, and apparently 
lifeless, it conveys vividly to the imagination the idea of a burnt-out 
oe Erwin F. SMITH. 
1 Notes.on the Geology and Natural History of the Peninsula of Lower Cali- 
fornia. By George P. Merrill, Curator, Dept. of Geology, U. S. National Museum. 
Washington, Gov. Printing Office, 1897. 
