1885.| Botany. 505 
hard wood was found between the pith and the outer zone 
where chlorophyll is expected. It was also observed in Lycium 
that the chlorophyll was not in the form of bodies, but diffused 
in character, as it is said to be in some infusorians. In Lycium 
the cells of the pith showed, in winter, abundance of protoplasm 
which had the nucleus on one side and very striking bands ex- 
tending thence across the cell to the further side.—FProc. A. N. S. 
Phila. 
STRASBURGER’S BOTANISCHE PrActTicuM.—Abouta year ago this 
book appeared in Germany, where it has received many favorable 
notices, as an excellent work for the laboratory student. The 
book is so valuable that it must soon be translated, but in the 
meantime we may well give an outline of what it contains. After 
an introductory chapter devoted to the microscope, various kinds 
of apparatus, raga peui taray etc., etc., the work is divided 
into thirty-four “tasks,” in which partic ular subjects are taken 
up. The aim ol the GE is to tad the student at once in 
microscopy and botany, rightly believing that the art named can 
be best learned in its application to the science of plants. As far 
as possible the plants selected are common and easily obtainable 
ones. The illustrations, 4 Daig there are 182, are all new, and 
are made especially for t 
e general sequence me subjects is as follows: Starch, ale- 
urone, protoplasm, chlorophyll and other coloring matters; crys- 
tals; anatomy of the root of sugar-beet ; fruit of pear ; epidermis 
and stomata of Iris, Tradescantia and other plants ; hairs of vari- 
ous plants; fibro-vascular bundles of Indian corn, oats, palm, 
Ranunculus, Aristolochia, etc., etc.; secondary wood, anatomy ot 
stems of Scotch pine, linden, ivy, locust (Robinia), pumpkin, etc., 
etc., running through twenty “tasks” or chapters. A couple of 
chapters are devoted to the structure and reproduction of mosses, 
five to the fungi and alge, one to the reproduction of pterido- 
phytes, another to that of conifers, and five to that of phanerogams 
iy pa smaller edition has appeared in Europe, but this we have 
not yet seen. We trust that a translation of either the larger or 
the smaller work will be placed before the English-speaking stu- 
dents of this country. There is certainly room for such a book 
here.— Charles E. Bessey. 
- Tue Pampas.—In answer to the statement of Professor Asa 
Gray, following Darwin and Ball, that the pampas of South 
America are treeless because the only country from which trees 
could be derived could not supply species suitable to the soil and 
climate, Mr. Edwin Clark puts forward, in a letter to Mature, 
what he, from long residence and observation, believes to be a 
more probable cause or series of causes. From the absence of 
rivers or water storage, periodical droughts paty occur in the 
~ 
