964 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.  [Vou. XXXII. 
Rosa stellata, a New Mexican relative of the Lower Californian 
R. minutifolia, which was described by Professor Wootton in the 
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club of March last, is made the sub- 
ject of a critical note by the eminent rhodologist Crépin, in the Bul 
letin de l Herbier Boissier for September. 
Rubber forms the subject of Pt. 8 of Vol. iii of the Buletin of 
Miscellaneous Information of the Trinidad Botanic Gardens. 
A paper by Blanc and Decrock, on the geographical distribution 
of the Primulacez, is brought to conclusion in the September num- 
ber of the Bulletin de l Herbier Boissier, 
In Nos. 49-51 of Die Gartenwelt, Alwin Berger, curator of the 
acclimatization garden at La Mortola, on the Riviera, briefly describes 
the more common and attractive of the cultivated Agaves, illustrat- 
ing his paper by half-tone reproductions of excellent photographs of 
a considerable number of species, which show these as they are grown 
in the open air at La Mortola. 
The variability of the Norway spruce, Picea excelsa, is discussed at 
some length in a well-illustrated paper by C. Schröter, published in 
the August number of the Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden 
Gesellschaft in Zürich. 
D. T. Johnson publishes a paper on the leaf and sporocarp of 
Pilularia in the Botanical Gazette for July, and a paper on the devel- 
opment of the leaf and sporocarp in Marsilia guadrifolia, in the Annals 
of Botany for June. 
Laboratory Bulletin, No. 9, of Oberlin College, issued in June, is 
entirely devoted to botanical subjects: The effects of bloom on the 
transpiration of leaves, by Roberta Reynolds; A new species of 
-Pyrenomycete parasitic on an alga; List of Ohio plants not recorded 
in the latest state catalogue; and Unusual forms of maple seedlings, 
— the last three by the late Professor Herbert L. Jones. 
The Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science for 1897 contains 
the following botanical articles: Golden, Pure yeast in bread ; Stone, 
The susceptibility of different starches to digestive ferments ; Bryan, 
Evolution of free nitrogen in bacterial fermentations ; Ferris, Micro- 
organisms in flour; Bitting, The number of micro-organisms in air, 
water, and milk, as determined by their growth upon different media; 
Thomas, The effect of formalin on germinating seeds; Olive, A list 
of the Mycetozoa, collected near Crawfordsville ; Snyder, The germ 
of pear blight; Arthur, Water power for botanical apparatus ; Coul- 
