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.

NOVITATES OCCIDENTALES.-X.

By EDWARD L. GREENE.

Vicia semicineta. 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.]

cuneate-obcordate to obtusely-obovate: the upper oblanceolate, acute and mucronate, the margins of all denticulate or serrulate, the shortest 2 lines, the longest 5 lines long, the lowest glabrous, the uppermost often with a long silky pubescence beneath: filiform peduncle mostly solitary and appearing terminal; head round-ovoid, inch high: calyx-tube subcylindrical, 10-nerved, glabrous, not quite half as long as the subulate-aristiform slender teeth, these glabrous in age, but in bud clothed with long villous or silky hairs.

High Sierra in Alpine Co., California, Geo. Hansen, 1892. A fine new ally of T. longipes; rather diminutive.

Trifolium Arizonicum. Annual, branching, the branches a foot long, ascending, stoutish and slightly fistulous, somewhat flexuous, the internodes short; whole plant glabrous: leaves short-petioled; leaflets an inch long, linear and linear-lanceolate, spinulose-serrulate: peduncles 2 or 3 inches long: heads globose, about 8 lines in diameter, involucrate: calyx-tube campanulate, 10-nerved; teeth subulate, aristatepointed, little exceeding the tube in length, strongly 1-nerved.

Known only from specimens collected near Flagstaff, northern Arizona, by Dr. H. H. Rusby in 1883. Species related to the Californian T. tridentatum, but a plant of peculiar aspect, and very marked characters of calyx.

Thermopsis argentata. Rather slender, a foot or two in height; all the growing parts, and when young the whole plant silvery-canescent throughout with a very dense and minute silky pubescence, the mature parts also not indistinctly silky and pale: stipules to 1 inches long, from broadly to narrowly lanceolate and often slightly falcate: leaflets of the lowest leaves obtusish and of narrowly cuneate-obovate outline, of the upper from oblanceolate to rhombic-obovate and very acute: raceme short and rather few-flowered: calyx-teeth triangular-subulate and about as long as the campanulate tube: petals of the wings and keel notably longer than the banner: pods long, spreading, silky-tomentulose.

Modoc County, California, Milo S. Baker, 1893.

Thermopsis velutina. T. Californica, var. velutina, Greene, Eryth. i. 81. Stouter than T. Californica and much smaller, in maturity densely villous-tomentose throughout, the pubescence of only the younger or growing parts more appressed and somewhat silvery-silky: stipules often larger than the leaflets, 1 inches long, obliquely ovate and obtusish or ovate-lanceolate: leaflets from narrowly to broadly and somewhat rhomboidly ovate, mostly acutish: racemes short and short-peduncled: ovaries densely white-tomentose.

The plant was first made known to me, and imperfectly, from Mt. Hamilton, which must be its northern limit; and it now proves to be frequent five hundred miles to the southward, in the mountainous parts of San Diego Co., Calif. It is certainly quite distinct from T. Californica.

Ranunculus Populago. Stem solitary from a fascicle of fibrous roots, erect, leafy, the whole plant flaccid and glabrous, about 6 to 10 inches high: leaves thin-membranaceous, from round-reniform to cordate-ovate, obtuse, entire or obscurely crenate, on long petioles; the cauline smaller, ovate and ovate-lanceolate, sessile: peduncles many, slender, surpassing the cauline leaves to which they are axillary: flowers yellow, inch broad; petals 5 or 6, obovate-oblong: heads of rather numerous thick short-pointed achenes small, globose or depressed-globose.

A somewhat rare plant of the mountains of eastern Oregon and adjacent Idaho, distributed by Mr. Cusick and others under various names, but a very well defined new species, resembling a diminutive Caltha palustris; but the plant is not aquatic.

Ranunculus eximius. Near R. adoneus, but radical leaves very few, often 1 only, on a short stout petiole 1-2 inches long, the blade of cuneate-obovate or almost flabelliform outline, deeply about 7-lobed at the broad summit, otherwise entire; upper cauline leaves sessile, broadly cuneiform, 1 inch long, cleft to the middle into about 5 lanceolate or broadly linear lobes: periphery of the expanded