reveal other colonies on the whole six day canoe trip. Thinking this location and the fact just mentioned somewhat unusual, we thought thee would be interested to have a specimen, and the excellent photograph contributed by my friend E. S. Cary..... Alfred S. Haines, Westtown, Pa.

The habitat is indeed interesting, showing as it does the walking fern in the unusual role of an epiphyte. One ordinarily associates this species with rocky situations, and it probably reaches its best development in such regions; but even there it is not a rock lover in the same sense as Asplenium Trichomanes or the genera Pellaca and Woodsia. Scattered plants often do grow along the ledges but the best growths are down below where some old moss-covered log or rock furnishes root-protection and opportunity for the leaf tips to develop new plants. The gum tree in the picture with its covering of moss or liverwort seems to have furnished the required conditions, but the origin of the colonyhow it got there and whence it came — is not so easy to explain.

NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN

REVIEWS

Clute's Laboratory Botany*

In this manual the author has arranged a course to cover a year's work in botany for the high school. Part I deals with the structure and life processes of angiosperms; part II, with the structure and evolution of the plant kingdom. A list of physiological experiments is appended at the end of the book.

While the order in which the studies are arranged conforms to the plan adopted in the usual botanical text-books, the manual allows considerable flexibility in the treatment of topics as regards time of year, subject matter, and local conditions. For example, instead of beginning with the usual topics, cells or seeds, the study of trees may be taken up and provision is made by incorporating in the manual a handy key to the common broad-leaved and evergreen trees; parts I and II may be transposed; the physiological experiments may be performed apart from the work on morphology or they may be considered in connection with it.

* Clute, Willard N. Laboratory Botany. Pp. 172. 1909. Ginu and Co.

The

There is much to commend the manual to teachers. various chapters are prefaced with useful hints on presentation, preparation, and source of materials. The choice of subjects is excellent. The questions are clear, definite, and logical, and they are designed, apparently, to give the pupil training in self-help. It is evident that the author has succeeded in preparing a valuable manual because, in large measure, he has succeeded in omitting non-essentials.

NORMAL SCHOOL AT TRENTON, NEW JERSEY

EMMELINE MOORE

Jepson's "A Flora of California "'*

The beginnings of an ambitious and important work under the above title have recently appeared from the hand of Dr. Willis Linn Jepson, assistant professor of dendrology in the University of California. The sixty-four pages now published are neither the beginning nor the end of the completed volume or volumes, but are the pages that are concerned with the families that contain most of the Californian trees, the group to which, of late, Professor Jepson has devoted especial attention. It may be assumed that the preceding and intervening pages are in an advanced stage of preparation, otherwise the continuity of pagination might easily meet with serious difficulties. As to the scope of the work, one can at the date of writing simply draw inferences, but the limitation of what is yet to appear in front of the Gymnosperms to thirty-two pages suggests the probability of the inclusion of extended keys to the families and the improbability that a detailed treatment of the Pteridophyta will be attempted. The families of the Gymnosperms that find a place in the pages already published are the Pinaceae, with the genera Pinus (17 sp.), Tsuga (2 sp.), Picea (2 sp.), Pseudotsuga (2 sp.), and Abies (5 sp.); Taxodiaceae, with the genus Sequoia (2 sp.); Cupressaceae, with the genera Libocedrus (1 sp.), Thuja (1 sp.),Chamæcyparis (1 sp.), Cupressus (5 sp.), and Juniperus (4 sp.); and Taxaceae, with the genera Taxus (I sp.) and Torreya (1 sp.). The * Jepson, Willis Linn. A Flora of California. Pp. 33-64. f. 1-13; 337-368. f. 61-65. 4 N 1909. Cunningham, Curtiss & Welsh, San Francisco. Price 90 cts. for pp. 33-64; 80 cts. for pp. 337-368.

Gymnosperms, as is well known, have a remarkable development in California both as to number of species and as to the dimensions of individual trees. The botanical traveler on the Pacific Coast is soon impressed by the fact that the Sequoias are not the only "big trees." Professor Jepson gives the maximum height of the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) as 340 feet; the "big tree" (Sequoia gigantea), 325 feet; the lowland fir (Abies grandis), 275 feet; the sugar pine (Pinus Lambertiana), 250 feet; the yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa), 225 feet; the noble fir (Abies nobilis), 250 feet; the red fir (Abies magnifica) and the white fir (A. concolor), 200 feet; the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia), 200 feet; the tideland spruce (Picea sitchensis), 190 feet; the arbor-vitae (Thuja plicata), 190 feet; the coast hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), 180 feet; the Lawson cypress (Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana), 175 feet; and the incense cedar (Libocedrus decurrens), 150 feet.

The families treated on pages 337-368 of the second part of Professor Jepson's work are the Salicaceae, with the genera Salix (17 sp.) and Populus (3 sp.); Betulaceae, with the genera Alnus (4 sp.) and Betula (2 sp.); Corylaceae, with the single genus Corylus (1 sp.); Fagaceae, with the genera Quercus (14 sp.), Pasania (1 sp.), and Castanopsis (2 sp.); Juglandaceae, with the single genus Juglans (1 sp.); Myricaceae with the single genus Myrica (2 sp.); and Urticaceae, with the genera Urtica (3 sp.), Hesperocnide (1 sp.) and Parietaria (unfinished).

The work includes good half-tones illustrating the general form and habit of selected species of trees and there are also drawings showing some of their less conspicuous diagnostic characters. Keys to genera and species accompany the descriptions. The nomenclature seems to be that of the Vienna Rules. The press-work is excellent, but one notes several small errors in writing or editing. Née appears uniformly and persistently with. the accent over the wrong "e"; Endlicher is endowed with a prenomen that is the Latin ablative form of his name as it appears on the title-page of his Synopsis Coniferarum ; Thuja is spelled with a "j" in the key and the bibliographical references but with a "y" in its main position; Podocarpus is made to end in "um "

but these and their kind are minor flaws that cannot interfere seriously with the large and helpful part that Professor Jepson's new Flora is bound to play in the study of Californian plants. MARSHALL A. HOWE

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLUB

NOVEMBER 24, 1909

The meeting was held at the New York Botanical Garden and was called to order by Dr. E. B. Southwick. Owing to the inclemency of the weather, there were only a few members present.

Dr. W. A. Murrill exhibited and described a phalloid found by him near Cinchona, Jamaica, in January, 1909, which is allied to the anomalous genus, Phallogaster, described by A. P. Morgan in 1892. A description of this new phalloid was published in Mycologia for January. Dr. Murrill prefaced his remarks with a brief account of the most common phalloids in the vicinity of New York and the species known to occur in the island of Jamaica.

Dr. J. K. Small spoke on "Some Recently Naturalized Plants from Southern Florida." This paper will appear in a forthcom

ing issue of the Bulletin. Adjourned.

PERCY WILSON,

Secretary

DECEMBER 14, 1909

The meeting was called to order at the American Museum of Natural History, with President Rusby in the chair. Forty-four persons were present. After the reading and approval of the minutes of the meeting for November 24, the resignation of Dr. J. A. Allen, dated November 17, 1909, was presented and accepted.

The announced paper of the evening on "The Reclamation of the Desert in the San Bernardino Valley" was then presented by Dr. Rusby and illustrated by some seventy lantern-slides. The following abstract was prepared by the speaker.

The distinctions between desert and arid regions were explained and that under discussion was defined as being arid rather than desert, for the most part, although the production of cultivated crops without irrigation was impossible. The first settlement established was a Moravian mission near the present western boundary of Redlands. This was afterwards purchased by the Mormons, who instituted local irrigation. The first extensive irrigation operations were employed by the town of San Bernardino, the present water supply of which is about 1,200,000 gallons, obtained by the deflection of Lytle Creek, besides a large amount from deeply driven wells. This water supplies not only the requirements of the city, but those of a large cultivated area.

San Bernardino is near the western mouth of the large, somewhat horseshoe-shaped valley, from the mountains about which all the water of the valley must come, except that which falls during the rainy season, and which varies from six to twelve inches in the different parts of the valley, the larger amounts falling successively nearer the mountains. The moisture brought by the Pacific winds is precipitated in crossing these mountains during the winter season only. At the greater elevations, 10,000 to 12,000 feet, it is deposited as snow; lower, in the form of copious rains, and in the valley itself in a more or less scanty rainfall. During this period, moisture is not carried to the great interior plain of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, where a dry season then prevails. In the summer, conditions are exactly reversed, no rain whatever falling west of the mountains. It thus happens that the San Bernardino valley gets its natural water supply at a time when cultivation can derive the least benefit from it and the problem is presented of preserving the winter supply and distributing it during the summer. The highly successful operations in the western part of the valley demonstrated the existence of a most fertile soil of great depth, and showed that the sole requirement for a rich agricultural region was an abundant water supply. It was recognized that a town located at the eastern end or top of the valley would be nearer the mountain supply and that its subterranean streams would be