1885.| Botany. . 399 
dant in the eastern part of the State, now they have retreated a 
hundred to a hundred and fifty miles, and have been followed up 
by the blue-stems (Andropogon and Chrysopogon). The blue- 
stems now grow in great luxuriance all over great tracts of the 
plains of Eastern Nebraska, where twenty years ago the ground 
was practically bare, being but thinly covered by buffalo grasses, 
In Dakota it is the same, the blue-stems are marching across the 
plains, and turning what were once but little better than deserts 
into grassy prairies.— Charles E. Bessey. 
Gray’s BOTANICAL CONTRIBUTIONS, 1884—’85.—These occupy 
fifty-four pages of the Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci., and bear 
date of January 26, 1885. There are four parts, as follows: 
1. A revision of some Borragineous genera. 1I. Notes on some 
American species of Utricularia. «1. New genera of Arizona, 
California and their Mexican borders, and two additional Ascle- 
piadacee. 1v. Gamopetale Miscellanez. 
In the first section, after a discussion of various structural 
points, a revision of the Eritrichiez is proposed which suppresses 
the genus Eritrichium (the name however being retained for a 
section of Omphalodes). The species are distributed among the 
genera Omphalodes, Krynitzkia, Plagiobothrys and Echidiocarya. 
In the second section certain obscurities in connection with the 
synonymy of species of Utricularia are clearedaway. In 111 the new 
genera are Veatchia (Anacardiacez), Lyonothamnus (Rosacez ?), 
Pringleophytum (Acanthacez), Phaulothamnus (Phytolaccacez), 
represented by an interesting but uncomely shrub (P. spinescens 
from N. W. Sonora, Himantostemma (Asclepiadacez), and Roth- 
rockia (Asclepiadacez), the last dedicated to “ my friend and for- 
mer pupil, Dr. J. Trimble Rothrock, professor of botany in the 
University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, a keen botanist and 
zealous teacher, an explorer both in Alaska and Arizona, author 
of a sketch of the Flora of Alaska, and of the botany of Wheel- 
er's report upon the U. S. Surveys of Arizona and Southern Cal- 
ifornia, and whose name it is well to commemorate in an Arizono- 
exican genus,” : ae 
In Section 1v the most important accession of species is a sec- 
ond Schweinitzia, viz., S. reynoldsie, discovered by Miss Mary C. 
Reynolds near St. Augustine and on the Indian river, Florida, 
—Charles E. Bessey. 
Boranicat Nores.—The second number of the Bulletin of the 
Washburn College Laboratory of Natural History (Topeka, Kan- 
sas) contains descriptions of a number of new species of fungi, 
among which are two Phalli, viz., Phallus collaris and P. pu i 
atus, the first illustrated by several figures. Simblum rubescens, 
the curious plant of abominable odor and strange distribution, 
first described by Gerard in the Torrey Bulletin, is recorded as 
common in Shawnee county. The Kansas form is set off (with- 
