884 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vou XXXII. 
the hopes entertained, and there is every reason to expect that other 
bulletins now in hand will be equally useful. T 
Life Zones and Crop Zones. — Under this title Dr. C. Hart Mer- 
riam has recently published an important bulletin from the division 
of biological survey of the United States Department of Agriculture. 
The paper is accompanied by a map, in color, which shows at once 
the distribution of what are called the boreal, transition, upper 
austral, lower austral, Gulf strip of lower austral, and tropical zones, 
and the humid divisions of the austral zones east of the great plains. 
If, as the author hopes, this and similar reports tend to guide experi- 
mental agriculture into rational lines, it will be paid for in saving to 
the country many times over in a single year. T. 
Bray’s Lower Sonoran Flora. — In the Botanical Gazette for 
August, Prof. W. L. Bray publishes an important paper “on the 
relation of the flora of the lower Sonoran zone in North America to 
the flora of the arid zones of Chili and Argentine,” in which are 
embodied the results of studies carried out at the suggestion of Pro- 
fessor Engler of Berlin. The general conclusion is reached that for 
most species the distribution and relationships in the two zones are 
such as can be accounted for from data that are reasonably well 
established, while the element which remains rests upon very much 
the same basis of speculation as the relation of all of the great salt 
desert regions of the world to each other. 
East Indian Iron Woods. — Bulletin No. rọ of the Koloniaal 
Museum of Haarlem, issued in July, is devoted to a consideration of 
the anatomical structure of the iron woods of the Indies, to which is 
added a list of plants from other parts of the world to which this 
name is applied. A set of very good cross-section plates adds to 
the usefulness of the article. 
Botanical Notes. — The September number of the Bulletin of the 
Torrey Botanical Club contains No. 16 of Dr. Small’s studies in the 
botany of the southeastern United States, chiefly occupied with 
descriptions of new species peculiar to that region; a paper by Pro- 
fessor Porter on the flora of the lower Susquehanna; No. 24 of the 
78 pp., with 1 map. — Bulletin No. 2 (Scientific Series, No. 1). On the Instincts 
and Habits of the Solitary Wasps. By George W. Peckham and Elizabeth G. 
Peckham. iv + 245 pp., 14 pls. Madison, 1878. 
