254 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXVI, 
A specimen of Araucaria. cookii, coning in the temperate house 
at the Kew Gardens, is figured in the Gardeners’ Chronicle of 
November 30. 
The New England form of Lycopodium complanatum is iius var. 
flabelliforme by Fernald in Rhodora for November. 
B. D. Gilbert publishes a note on Lycopodium tristachyum in 
Torreya. for October. 
J. H. Faull. contributes an account of the anatomy of Osmundacez 
to the Botanical Gazette for December. 
The account. of the mosses of the * Belgica" expedition to the 
extreme South, by Cardot, occupies a quarto pamphlet of 48 pages, 
illustrated by 14 plates, published by the Belgian government. 
Pseudoleskea artarie and Leskea obscura are comparatively described 
by Thériot in a paper reprinted from the Recueil de la Société Havraise 
d' Études Diverses for 19or. 
An extensive and well-illustrated paper on Alaskan alge, by De 
Alton Saunders, constitutes No. 25 of the “ Papers from the Harri- 
man Alaska Expedition” in course of publication in the Proceedings 
of the Washington Academy of Sciences:' The catalogue includes 380 
species, of which 240 are new to Alaska. Nine new species and one 
new genus, (Pleurophycus, Setchell and Saunders) are described. 
Lemaire, who has been studying the micro-chemistry of the sheath 
of the blue-green alge, states, in the recent numbers of the Journal 
de Botanique, that in Anabzena, Nostoc, and some other genera the 
mucilaginous sheath consists of a pectic compound, which, in the 
case of some species of Scytonema and Phormidium, is associated 
with another substance, which he calls “ schizophycose,” the latter, in 
some species of Scytonema, Foot, etc. > Peng further associated 
with cellulose. 
The Diatomacez of the Hull district are listed and Roiited in 
No. 4 of the Transactions of the Hull Scienti tfic and Field Naturalists 
Club, issued in December. 
The cultivation of mushrooms is anally effected by the use : of 
spawn either grown in mushroom beds or derived from compost 
piles or similar sources. In 1896 Costatin and Matruchot published 
interesting details of methods of securing pure and unquestionable 
spawn or mycelium of a few forms, and in the Revue Générale de 
Botanigüe of November r5 last they further describe their method of 
obtaining pure commercial cultures of Zricholoma nudum 
