Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/304

 280 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, iic. Prof. J. Wiesner sends from Vienna a pamphlet on '' The necessity of instruction in Natural History in the study of Medicine." It is a vigorous protest against the threatened " reform " of the medical curriculum in the Austrian universities, involving the removal therefrom of the course of pure science so generally insisted upon in all modern schools. Prof. E. L. Greene, who is now Professor of Botany in the Catholic University of America, at Washington, has resumed the publication of Pittonia, the second volume of which was concluded in 1892. The first part of the third volume contains papers on the Nomenclature of the Fuller's Teasel; on Sibara, a proposed new genus of Cruciferae (to include six species, previously placed in Arabis, Cardamine, Sisymbrium, and Nasturtium) ; on Lmigloisia, a genus proposed for three plants referred by Asa Gray to Navarretia; and on som.e Mexican Eupatoriacea, with descriptions of several new species in various orders. Erythea, of which Prof. Greene was the moving spirit, seems to have come to an end, no number having appeared since December last. The May part of the Icones Plantarum contains some interesting novelties. The new genera described and figured are Creaghiella Stapf (Melastomacese Oxysporeae), Homalopetalum Rolfe (Orchidese Epidendreas), Pterygiella Oliv. (Scrophularineae Eupbrasieae), Isano- chloa Hook. f. (Gramineae Andropogoneae), Littledalea Hemsl. (Gramineae Festuceae). Mr. N. E. Brown's genus Platykeleba, established by him in the Bulletin of Miscellaneous hiformation for 1895 (p. 250) on a plant collected by Baron in Madagascar, is figured : this had been previously sent from Madagascar by Hilsen- berg and Bojer ; Mr. Schlechter, when naming the British Museum Asclepiads last year, at first proposed to found a genus upon it, but subsequently decided to regard it as a Sarcostemma. Mr. E. p. Bicknell publishes in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club a paper on the Sisyrinchiums of the Eastern United States. Mr. Bicknell follows Mr. Watson in maintaining S. an- gustifolium Miller as the name for the simple-stemmed American plant, but appears to have overlooked Mr. Hemsley's paper in this Journal for 1884 (pp. 108-110) in which this name was re-established. He considers the S. Bermudiaiium of American authors, not of LinnaBUS, as a distinct species, which he calls S, graminoides. By a slip, however, the name where it first appears is printed '^ gram- noides,'' and we are curious to know whether Dr. Britton's views as to priority of place will induce him to insist on the retention of the name in this, its earliest, form. Another new species is S. atlanticum. The new part (xxi.) of the Flora of British India is devoted to the first instalment of Sir J. D. Hooker's important revision of the Indian grasses. It extends to 224 pages, and brings the enume- ration down to Aristida,