506 General Notes. [May, 
summer, and at such seasons the droves of horses and cattle and 
the numerous aboriginal wild rodents destroy every vestige of 
vegetation in their efforts to live, the cattle even tearing out the 
roots of the pampas grass. The existence of an unprotected tree 
is impossible. Nothing survives save thistles, some grasses and 
clovers, a few poisonous plants, thorny dwarf acacias and wiry 
rushes. The extensive introduction of European plants has only 
added to the flora of the pampas a few species, such as two this- 
tles that are unassailable by cattle. Yet the soil is fertile and 
trees grow luxuriantly wherever they are protected. 
BotanicaL Nores.—The odd tree known to the Mexicans 
by the name of Ocotilla, and to botanists as Fouquieria splendens, 
a native of the Rio Grande plateau region, has been made the 
subject of chemical studies by Miss Helen C. De S. Abbot, of 
the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the results of which have 
lately been published in an eight page pamphlet. A new vegeta- 
ble wax was discovered in the bark, to which the name of Ocotilla 
wax was given. Dr. Farlow’s paper on the Synchitria of 
the United States, in the March Botanical Gazette is of unusual 
interest. It contains déscriptions of all the species known to 
exist in the United States, ten in all. The Botanic garden of 
Buitenzorg, Java, founded in 1817, consists of ninety-one and a 
half acres, and contains more than nine thousand species of plants, 
each represented by two specimens. Connected with the garden 
is a botanical museum, containing the herbarium, a collection of 
vegetable products, and the library, with facilities for drawing 
and photography. All this is in far-off Java! When may we 
hope for that kind and amount of state help in this country which 
will enable our botanists to begin the making of botanic gardens 
worthy of the name? As showing the tendency in our best 
universities we note that, according to an item in the Gardeners’ 
Monthly, the University of Michigan “has established a chair of 
forestry in connection with its other branches of education.” — 
The University of Nebraska has made an appropriation of five 
thousand dollars for procuring apparatus and collections for its 
department of botany. 
ENTOMOLOGY. 
REPRODUCTION IN THE Honey-BEE.—At a late meeting of the 
were shown under polarized light with the prisms crossed, so that 
two sphincters which overlap, and the fibers of which cross, can 
be dissected. One resolves the polarized beam completely, while 
