Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/262

 240 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. includes Arauja albens among the " New South Wales plants better known in English gardens." As to its occurrence in gardens, the editor of the Chronicle is in a position to speak with authority, though we note that Arauja is not included in Mr. Nicholson's Dictionary of Gardening; but we are surprised to learn that the plant grows in New South Wales. It may be that the hitherto untrodden parts of Australia will revolutionize our notions of plant- distribution ; for other South American species — e. g. Mitraria coccinea — were among the selection of her drawings which Mrs. Rowan brought to the British Museum to be named, although they are not included among those exhibited. We learn from Herr V. F. Brotherus, of Helsingfors, in a letter that has just come to hand, that he has started on a journey into Central Asia. '' I am going," he says, "via Samarkand and Tash- kend to Thian Shan for the purpose of bryological researches in the highlands of Issikkoul." The district is a new and promising one, and in the hands of Herr Brotherus is likely to yield rich results. The traveller acquired an excellent training for his present enter- prise during his botanical expedition to the Caucasus some years ago. We wish him every success. Mr. Thorild Wulff, junior, an enthusiastic young Swedish botanist who visited England in 1894, publishes in the Botanisk Notiser an account of his visit to the Isle of Wight. He describes and gives names to some of the dwarf forms familiar to those who know the Freshwater downs — Scabiosa Columbaria f. nana, Carlina vulgaris f. humillima (a " most distinguished variety"), and Campa- nula rotundifolia f. pygmcea ; and identifies another with a previously described plant — Pimpinella Saxifraga f. arenaria N. Bryhn. Harry Corbyn Levinge, who died at his residence, Knockdrin Castle, Mullingar, on March 11th, in his sixty-eighth year, was for a long period Secretary to the Government of Bengal (Public Works), during which time he devoted all his leisure to natural history. His collection of Indian ferns, more particularly from Sikkim, Kashmir, and the Nilgherries, was very extensive, and he had intended to work it up on his return home, when it was unfortunately destroyed by fire : Mr. Levinge then devoted himself to the Irish flora. Notes from him have appeared in this Journal from time to time — the first in 1885 : his most important contri- bution being that on Neotinea intacta (Journ. Bot. 1892, 194). In the Irish Naturalist he published three papers on Westmeath plants, which added greatly to our knowledge of the botany of that county. He added Chara denudata to the flora of the British Isles. Mr. Levinge formed an excellent herbarium of British plants, which he has bequeathed to the Dublin Museum of Science and Art. We are indebted to Nature of April 23rd and the Irish Naturalist for April for most of the above information.