1889.] Bacteriology. 725 
Some Recent Botanical Literature.— In the August and Sep- 
tember numbers of the Journal of Botany George Murray continues 
his useful catalogue of the Marine Algas of the West Indian Region. 
—Mr. Buchanan White, in the September number, publishes a list of 
British willows, amounting to seventeen different speces, with many 
varieties and hybrids. — Britten and Boulger's Biographical Index of 
British and Irish Botantists has reached Lindsay. It is a most con- 
densed index, and one wishes it could have been a little less so, es- 
pecially in case of such men as Knight, Leighton, Lindley, etc. — A 
short obituary of the Rev. M. J. Berkeley appears in the September 
Grevillea. Born in 1803, he lived until the 30th of July of this year, 
reaching the ripe age of nearly eighty-six years. For more than half 
a century he was a careful student of the fungi. His herbarium, con- 
taining the types of about five thousand species, was deposited in the 
Kew Herbarium in 1879. — M. C. Cooke's new edition of his Hand- 
book of the British Fungi has reached the genus Russula. The last 
species described is numbered 1214. Professor Underwood and O. F. 
Cook have compiled a generic synopsis of the Basidiomycetes and 
Myxomycetes covering twenty-one pamphlet pages. It is designed 
to accompany A Century of Illustrative Fungi, distributed by the 
BACTERIOLOGY. 
Phenyl Alcohol as a Preservative for Growths of Bacteria 
on nutrient Agar agar.— While working on bacteria at the Illinois 
Laboratory of Natural History recently, the writer of this note made 
a few experiments with a view to finding something that could be used 
to preserve growths of bacteria in and on nutrient agar agar. Among 
a number of preservatives employed a thirty per cent, solution of car- 
bolic acid in alcohol was finally settled on, as giving the most satis- 
factory results. The acid counteracts the whitening tendency of the 
alcohol to such an extent that the ])reserved agar agar is more trans- 
parent than the original. For very profuse surface growths it does not 
answer well, because the alcohol hardens, and renders them brittle, so 
that they are liable subsequently to flake off from the gelatine. Growths 
which have not been allowed to stand too long, however, before fixing, 
retain in the preservative much of their original appearance. The 
