55o 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. XII, No. 8, 
Orton Hall, April 1, 1912. 
After reading and approval of the minutes, the Club listened 
to an informal talk by Dr. A. M. Bliele on a recent trip to Italy. 
Dr. Bleile told in a delightful manner about the people of the 
different places visited, their characteristics and manners of life; 
of visits to a half-extinct volcano and to Pompeii; of the monu- 
ments and ruins, the art palaces and cathedrals at Rome, Florence 
and Venice; and of the museum, aquaria, bacteriological and 
zoological institutes and other educational institutions at Naples, 
Pompeii and Vienna. 
Mr. Forest Brown reviewed a series of papers by Raunkiaer on 
“The Statistics of Life-forms as a Basis for Biological Plant 
Geography.” The author has made numerical studies of the 
position of buds in plants surviving the unfavorable season. He 
is able thus to classify plants into some thirty types the distribu- 
tion of which he has traced in North America, Europe, and various 
other portions of the globe. Five of these are as follows: (1) 
Phanerophytes (trees) with surviving buds supported above the 
soil; (2) Geophytes with surviving buds at the earth’s surface; 
(3) Hemicryptophytes with surviving buds just beneath the sur- 
face ; (4) Cryptophytes with surviving buds deep in the earth ; (5) 
Therophytes which survive only as seed. 
With such data Raunkiaer has been successful in plotting 
biochores, or biological boundary lines, and in defining a number 
of life-zones which he farther shows to be determined by climate. 
C. L. Metcalf, Secretary. 
Date of Publication, June 7, 1912. 
