BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 
1S3 
The third volume of The Cactacece —“ descriptions and illustra¬ 
tions of the Cactus Family ”—by N. L. Britton and Mr. J. N. Kose 
was issued in October last by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 
Like the preceding volumes, it is admirably printed and abundantly 
‘illustrated—there are 24 plates, some of them coloured, and 250 
figures in the text. We note that Cactus of Linnaeus is retained as 
a genus, the type being his C. Melocactus , “ under [which] name 
however were included several species.” Many new genera, mostly 
based on species of JEclii no cactus and JEchinocereus , are established, 
and the genus JEchinofossulocactus, to the publication of which by 
George Lawrence, until then overlooked, we called attention in this 
Journal for 1916 (p. 338), is taken up, with twenty-two species. 
The account of each species is very complete ; the bibliography, with 
notes on the material on which the species were originally based and 
whence the figures were taken, their geographical distribution and 
other information bearing on their history, are given with a complete¬ 
ness which we have seldom seen equalled. We note that Dr. Stapf 
(Bot. Mag. t. 8951, where by a printer’s error the work under notice 
is attributed to the Editor of this Journal) refrains from taking up 
JEchinofossulocactus for a plant which he describes, regarding it as 
“ an open question how far the splitting up of the genera proposed by 
Britton and Kose is justified on material and practical grounds.” 
The fourth volume of Oudemans’ JEnumeratio Systematica 
JEangorum has lately appeared. The host plants dealt with are the 
Arcliichlamydes from Mai vales onwards and the Metachlamydeae. The 
volume is much the same size as its predecessors, having 1232 (+x) 
pages, the last fifty or so of which are devoted to Additamenta to the 
previous three volumes, and the price is the same—4 guineas. The 
fifth volume is to contain the index, and on its appearance it will be 
possible to hazard an opinion as to the position the JEnumeratio is 
likely to hold in the literature of mycology. Meanwhile the im¬ 
portance of the work to the student cannot be over-estimated.—J. K. 
The British Mycological Society held its spring foray at Bristol 
on April 20-23rd. The first excursion was to Ashton Court Park, 
ending at the Long Ashton Horticultural Kesearch Station. On 
the 22nd, underground mushroom beds in disused Bathstone quarries 
were visited at Corsham, Wilts ; the last excursion was to Wrington. 
The country everywhere was amazingly dry and fungi were scarce. 
The evenings were devoted to informal discussions; Miss B. M. 
Breeze gave an account of her work on pollen sterility in the potato ; 
Mr. F. E. Smith described his investigations on the Mycogone 
disease of Mushrooms; and Miss E. M. Wakefield recorded her 
efforts to prove the relationship between Bhizoctonia violacea and 
Uelicobasidium purpureum. —J. K. 
A new edition (the sixth) of Mr. J. M. Lowson’s Text-booic of 
Botany has lately been issued (price 9s. 6rf.) by the University 
Tutorial Press. The issue of a new edition indicates that the book 
has a vogue among a certain class of students, but, as the references 
made in this Journal (1912, 325 ; 1914, 343) show, we cannot regard it 
as satisfactory. To our mind it presents the study of botany in a most 
