E. rubiginosum. Aplopappus rubiginosus, Torr. & Gray, Fl. ii. 240 (1843). An annual upright corymbose species, wearing much of the aspect of a Grindelia, but with the characters of Eriocarpum. E. phyllocephalum. Aplopappus phyllocephalus, DC., Prodr. v. 347 (1836). A Mexican species not yet seen by me. Dr. Kuntze has united this and the preceding under the name Aster phyllocephalus. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND NEWS. THE NEWLY formed Department of Botany at Chicago University has for its head Dr. J. M. Coulter, "Professorial Lecturer in Botany," Henry L. Clarke, assisting. ONE of the recent appointments in the U. S. Department of Agriculture is that of Victor K. Chesnut as Assistant in the Division of Botany. Mr. Chesnut is a graduate of the College of Chemistry, University of California, and in his student days employed vacation leisure to good purpose in botanical expeditions in the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada. As a graduate student at Chicago University, his specialty was organic chemistry, an intimate knowledge of which is, we understand, invaluable in the special line of investigation assigned for his pursuit. THE FILSON CLUB of Louisville, Kentucky, has announced as one of its forth-coming publications "The Life and Writings of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque," by Richard Ellsworth Call. This memoir, as stated in the Prospectus, had its genesis in an attempt by the author to clear up certain matters connected with the synonymy of a group of freshwater mollusks. In this manner much was incidentally learned concerning the personality of Rafinesque, and the conclusion was reached as the work proceeded, that Ameri ca's most eccentric, albeit versatile, naturalist had not always been fairly treated by his contemporaries. There resulted further the conviction that many naturalists now living have formed opinions concerning the nature and value of his work which appear to Dr. Call to be quite erroneous. The volume will include a complete bibliography of Rafinesque's writings containing over four hundred titles, together with a certified copy of his will, “one of the most remarkable testamentary documents ever probated." THE RECENT attempt to cut down the area of the national forest reservations should serve as a warning to every unmercantile Californian. It is plain that the Yosemite and other reservations are not secure so long as there are men in Congress with such lack of calibre as Representative Bowers. The plea made that portions of the reservations are capable of being applied to agricultural uses convicts the utterer of it of inanity. Rocks and cliffs are well enough in their way, but something more is needed for a forest reservation. The Government has in California only enough for the nucleus of a national forestry system, and it is insistent that the King's County and other reservations be not diminished. If the sheep and lumber men were given license there would not be a shrub or pine or single specimen of Sequoia gigantea left in the whole length of the Sierras. The proposition to empower the Secretary of the Interior with the approval of the President to reopen to settlement such portions of the reservations as he may see fit is designed to benefit only the corporations and stock-men of insatiate greed. Proponents of forestry, as well as lovers of the High Sierras, should interest themselves herein personally. They can write to the representatives from their districts setting forth such facts as may be within their reach. Chapters in the Early History of Hepaticology-IV., Notes on Western Lichens, New Species of Pacific Coast Plants, Marshall A. Howe 25 Thomas Howell, 32 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. CUBERY & COMPANY, PRINTERS 587 Mission Street, San Francisco, California NOVITATES OCCIDENTALES.-X. By EDWARD L. GREENE. Vicia semicinecta. Stoutish, very leafy, probably several feet high, the stem very prominently striate-angled and puberulent: leaflets 20 to 24, approximate, about 1 inch long, oblong-linear, mucronate, glabrous above, beneath silkypuberulent: peduncles far surpassing the leaves, the flowers probably in a short and dense raceme: pods obliquely oblong-linear, less than inch long, glaucescent, not blackening in maturity, few-seeded: seeds globose, 1 lines thick, dull black, nearly half encircled by the hilum. A most interesting species, manifestly allied to V. gigantea, but pods and seeds widely different; the flowers unknown. Collected in southeastern Oregon, on Crane Creek, by Mrs. R. M. Austin, 1893. Lupinus Tidestromii. Stems slender, decumbent, a foot long, from fleshy-fibrous perennial yellow roots; herbage silvery-silky throughout with a dense appressed pubescence: leaflets mostly 5 only, oblanceolate, acute: racemes rather short, on long and slender peduncles, the distinct whorls of flowers about 4 or 5: calyx villous rather than silky: corolla inch long, blue except a white spot on the banner, this changing to red; petals subequal; keel quite narrow, naked except a few villous hairs on the margin towards the apex. This is the L. littoralis of my Flora Franciscana and Bay Region Manual; though I never felt at all confident of its being the true L. littoralis. An examination of the originals of that species has placed it beyond all doubt that this plant of the middle Californian shores is entirely distinct. The description is drawn from specimens collected recently by Mr. Ivar Tidestrom, at Pacific Grove, near Monterey. Trifolium Hanseni. Perennial by many slender interlacing roots and rootstocks, the almost filiform sparingly leafy stems only 2 to 4 inches high: lowest leaflets from ERYTHEA, Vol. III., No. 2, [1 February, 1895.] |