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period of vitality still farther, by germinating spores of M. vestita 

 that are known to have been collected eighteen years. 



In Rhodora for January, Mr. G. E. Davenport has outlined 

 his position upon the generic names to be used in the tribe As- 

 pidieae. He limits the name Aspidium to certain exotic species 

 with peltate indusium and anastomosing veins. Polystichum is 

 adopted for the New England species with free veins and peltate 

 indusia of which the Christmas fern is an excellent type. For 

 the group represented by such forms as the wood ferns, marsh 

 ferns, etc., with reniform indusia attached at the sinus, the name 

 Nephrodium is used in place of Dryopteris. These names, it 

 may be added, are now in use by the majority of writers, both in 

 this country and in Europe. 



For a long time the evidence against the specific distinctness 

 of Asplenium ebenoides has been accumulating. Many were fully 

 convinced that it was a hybrid .but the production of at least one 

 plant by crossing its supposed parents was necessary to set all 

 doubts at rest. -This has now been done by Miss Margaret Slos- 

 son, who writes of her work in the Bulletin of the Torrey Bot- 

 anical Club for August. By sectioning the prothallia of As- 

 plenium ebeneum and Camptosorus rhizophyllus, and planting 

 archegonia of one species against antheridia of the other and vice 

 versa, she has at last been able to produce a plant with all the 

 essential characteristics of Asplenium ebenoides. Not the least 

 interesting of the facts brought out by the experiments is that the 

 parents of the hybrid are the very species long ago assumed likely 

 to be, though they belong to different genera. 



BOOK NEWS. 



The Journal of Mycology, after a lapse of several years has 

 again made its apearance. It is edited by Prof. W. A. Kellerman 

 and bids fair to be of much usefulness to students of the fungi. 



Those who are fond of books on out-of-door subjects will be 

 delighted with "Next to the Ground,"* by Martha McCullough 

 Williams. It has the distinction of being written in the South 

 about southern plants and animals by a Southerner, a combina- 

 tion not heretofore encountered in outdoor literature. 



*Next to the Ground, by Martha McCullough Williams, New 

 York. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1902, pp. 380. $1.20 net, 



