1885. | Botany. I219 
buried twenty inches below the surface of the soil, at the end of 
five years the following per cents grew, viz: Of Amarantus retro- 
flexus, forty-two; Ambrosia artemisiefolia, none; Brassica nigra, 
none; Bromus secalinus, none; Capsella bursa-pastoris, one 
hundred; Lepidium virginicum, ninety-four; Erechthites hiera- 
cifolia, none; Euphorbia maculata, none; Lychnis githago, none ; 
Anthemis cotula, fifty-two; Maiva rotunaifolia, two (?); Cno- 
thera biennis, eighty-two; Hlantago major, none; Ffolygonum 
hydropiper, six; Portulaca oleracea, thirty-eight; Quercus rubra, 
none; Rumex crispus, ninety ; Sefaria glauca, sixty-eight; Stel- 
laria media, seventy-two; Thuja occidentalis, none; Trifolium 
repens, four; Verbascum thapsus, eighty-four——From the pro- 
ceedings of the U. S. National Museum, we have a list, by Frank 
H. Knowlton, of the plants collected by C. L. McKay in Alaska, 
in 1881. In all 122 species are enumerated, distributed as fol- 
lows, viz: Dicotyledons, eighty-seven ; Monocotyledons, twenty- 
four; Conifers, one; Pteridophytes, five (one Equisetum, one Ly- 
copodium, three ferns); mosses, four; lichens, one. No new 
species are described. Professor Penhallow published, in the 
Canadian Record of Science for October, a paper upon the distri- 
bution of the reserve-material of plants in relation to disease, from 
which it appears that an abnormal storage of starch in the pith, 
wood and bark of the peach is associated with a deficiency of 
potash and chlorine and an excess of lime. This abnormal stor- 
age is accompanied apparently by imperfect nutrition, due to the 
loss of power of the tissues to dissolve the starch, which accord- 
ingly accumulates——The July Torrey Bulletin contains a paper 
by Professor Trelease showing that the fungus parasitic on Jun- 
cus tenuis, and hitherto known as Ustilago junct Schweinitz, is 
properly not an Ustilago at all, but a species of Cintractia. Ac- 
cordingly it must hereafter be known under the name of Cn- 
wactia junci (Schwein.) Trelease. The only other known species 
of the genus is C. aaicola (B) Cornu, from the southern United 
States and the West Indies. From a study of the develop- 
ment of the leaves of Pinus monophylla and P. edulis upon young 
trees growing upon his grounds in Germantown, Pa., Thomas 
Meehan concludes that the former is a depauperate state of the 
latter. His paper appears in the August Torrey Bulletin. The 
«Association Number” of the Botanical Gazette (Sept. and Oct.) 
contains forty-six pages of interesting matter, We are much 
pleased to read the announcement that beginning with the new 
year the size of this indispensable journal will be increased to at 
least twenty-four pages per month. An exhaustive index to vol- 
umes I to x will be published at the close of the present year. 
Professor John M. Coulter's Rocky Mountain Flora is in 
press, and will soon appear. It is to be uniform with Gray’s and 
Chapman’s Manuals, and will include descriptions of the plants 
from about the 100th meridian westward, and extending from 
British America southward through Colorado. 
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