228 The American Naturalist. [March, 
joint fibrous roots were sent out and from many of the joints there 
grew leafy stems, a meter or more in height. A careful investigation 
showed that these long trailing stems were at first underground stems, 
and that after growing under the surface for some distance, the sand 
had been removed by the shifting currents of water, thus exposing the 
stems tothe air. These exposed stems, thereafter grew as stolons run- 
ning over the surface as described above. Iam told that occasionally . 
these running stems almost entirely cover portions of the islands, and 
the broad sand-bars along the margins of the river.—CHARLES E. 
Bessry. 
Barnes and Heald’s Keys to Mosses.—Botanists will welcome 
the new, revised and extended “Analytic Keys to the Genera and 
Species of North American Mosses” which appeared in January of 
the present year, as one of the Bulletins of the University of Wiscon- 
sin. The thick pamphlet includes about 220 octavo pages, eight of 
which are devoted to a brief introduction, thirteen to the key to the 
genera, eighty-one to the key to the species, and one hundred and 
eighteen to descriptions of the species and varieties which have been 
published since the issue of Lesquereux and James’s Manual in 1884. 
Under the latter there are enumerated, six hundred and three forms, 
many of whose descriptions are here available for the first time to most 
American botanists. The work can not help but stimulate the ċollec- 
tion and study of mosses, in the botanical departments of our colleges 
and universities, and it should do somewhat to excite the interest of 
pupils in the high schools, academies and other secondary schools in 
which pupils pursue elementary botany. There is no good reason why 
students who are admitted to the Freshman classes of our colleges and 
universities should be wholly ignorant of the structure and relationship 
of the mosses, and this book (which may be obtained for one dollar) 
will be helpful to all teachers and pupils who wish to make an offort to 
know something of these interesting plants —Cuar.es E. Bessey. 
VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 
What is Leuconostoc mesenteroides ?—This organism WS 
first described by Cienkowsky in 1878, under the name of Ascococeus 
mesenteroides. He obtained his material from beet sugar vats, and de- 
scribed the organism as consisting either of rods or coccus forms. The 
gelatinous clumpy masses had been familiar to sugar makers for & 
