NOTES AND COMMENT 



Stanford University has published a volume of contributions which 

 is memorial to the late Prof. William Russell Dudley, for seventeen 

 years Professor of Systematic Botany at Stanford. Appreciations of 

 the life and personality of Professor Dudley are given by several of his 

 colleagues, together with lists of his publications and of his students 

 at Cornell and at Stanford. 



Among the contributions in the Dudley Memorial Volimae may be 

 mentioned the following: A paper by Professor Dudley on the vitality of 

 Sequoia, in which he describes the history of scars caused by fire in a 

 tree 2171 years old; a scar three feet in width requiring 105 years in 

 healing, other smaller scars requiring shorter periods, but none of them 

 having occasioned any decay. Professor Campbell has described the 

 developmental history of Calycularia, a Javan liverwort, the general 

 features of which resemble Pellia, at the same time that they indicate 

 the desirability of a revision of the systematic arrangement of the thal- 

 lose Jungermanniales. Professor Peirce records the results of clinostat 

 experiments made to determine the influence of equilateral illumination 

 on the structure of fern prothalli and of foliose and thallose liverworts. 

 The radial structure induced in species of Anthoceros failed to be exhib- 

 ited by the other material experimented upon, although the fern pro- 

 thalli were erect in habit, and produced antheridia and archegonia on 

 both surfaces. Dr. Abrams contributes a descriptive key to the Gym- 

 nosperms growing on the grounds of Stanford University. President 

 Jordan has contributed a paper on The Law of Geminate Species, which 

 is essentially the same as his paper of this title published in 1908. Dr. 

 W. A. Cannon gives the results of a stud}' of the salt content of several 

 plants found growing in an alkaline depression, together with deter- 

 minations of the conductivity of their juices. The plants investigated 

 were species of Atriplex which grow zonally about the edges of the alka- 

 line area. The plants encountered in passing into the area show a 

 successive decrease in calcium and an increase in sodium, together with 

 an increase in the electrical conductivity of their juices. 



The recent appearance of Mr. Norman Lament's book The Problems 

 of the Antilles has caused The London Times to espouse warmly his 



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