NOTES ON JiECENT RESEARCH. 



180 



efforts to provide Alpine plants with imitation Alpine surroundings. We 

 fully recognise that Dr. Engler has wider schemes in view than this, 

 however, and shall await the results with great interest. It would carry 

 us too far to analyse the rest of Engler's paper in detail, and it must 

 suffice to say that he gives a summary of the way the plant communities, 

 above referred to are distributed in the various districts of the different 

 Alpine regions — in other words, a sketch of the geographical distribution 

 of Alpine plants — as well as a short account of the geological history of 

 the flora of the Alps, and a brief synopsis of the chief methods and facts 

 of plant dissemination in general. 



This cursory glimpse at a paper bristling with details of interest and 

 importance to all horticulturists does scant justice to its merits in other 

 directions. It is undoubtedly a useful contribution to the literature of 

 the Alpine flora, full of suggestion, and, as we have shown, outlining a 

 bold and comprehensive piece of gardening, to which we may well wish 

 every success in the interest of experimental botany. No doubt excep- 

 tion can be taken to some of the terminology and spelling, e.g. Asi)lenuiii, 

 Aera, Brunella, and Sesleria coerulea, Alectorolophus [Bhinanthus) and 

 Ahies alba for Silver Fir, which is not always consistent, moreover; and 

 there may be divisions of opinion as to the selections of the plant 

 communities in various cases ; but these details do not seriously detract 

 from the value of Engler's work as a comprehensive and suggestive essay 

 on a new and interesting topic of the utmost importance. One omission, 

 if rectified in any further edition, would enhance the value' of even so 

 valuable a paper. There is no list of the literature, and we should like 

 to see references to the collections and writings of such pioneers in 

 Alpine floral work as John Ball, Packe, and others. 



A later number of the same publication* contains articles on a 

 Scale-insect disease of Cocoanut Palms in the Carolines, to combat which 

 Volkens proposes the introduction of Coccinellidefe, or Ladybirds ; on 

 an injurious Orchid fungus, Nectria bulbicola, by Hennings ; several 

 notes on recent systematic work, e.g. Schumann on Greicia asiatica in 

 Africa, and on some new species of Mapania ; Mez on two new species 

 of Embelia from China. Neither these nor the notes on the collection 

 of Mangrove bark, &c., are of sufficient horticultural importance for 

 further treatment here. M. W. 



Agriculture and Forestry. 



Agriculture and Forestry. — Those interested in the progress of 

 agriculture and forestry will find useful and valuable material in the 

 papers published by the Biological Division for Agriculture and Forestry 

 of the Kaiserliche Gesundslieitamte, Berlin. This division of a large 

 governmental research station was founded about the beginning of 1899, 

 and stafi'ed by well-known workers from all parts of the German Empire. 

 The results of their work are now appearing. The papers are issued as 

 " Heften " of various sizes, which may be purchased in series or singly. 

 That they are published by the well-known firms Paul Parey and Julius 



♦ Notizhl. des kunigl. lot. Cart, uiid Mm;. 13. III. No. 2.5, May l')01. 



