239 BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, <ic. The University of Glasgow has conferred the honorary degree of LL.D. upon Mr. Dyer. Glasgow folk seem unaware of Mr. Dyer's claims to this distinction ; the Evening Citizen of April 4th says : — " Mr. Thistleton {sic) Dyer, of Kew Botanic Gardens, has consider- able standing in horticultural circles, but the likelihood is that he was first heard of outside of these a week ago, when he was taken somewhat savagely to task, in the columns of the Saturday Review, for his policy of uprooting many of the clumps of trees with which the Gardens are studded." Such is fame ! We learn from Madras papers that the late Mr. M. A. Lawson, whose death we recorded last month, formed a very good herbarium at Ootacamund, which will probably be removed to Madras. He did much to re-establish the Government cinchona plantations on the Nilgiris, and succeeded in establishing a system by which quinine could be sold in the villages at a very cheap rate — an object which he had had in view for many years before its ac- complishment was possible. Mr. Lawson was born at Seaton Carew, Co. Durham, on Jan. 20th, 1840. The last part (vol. iv. pt. 2) of the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Glasgow contains papers on the occurrence of Cladium jamaicense in Bute, by J. Ballantyne ; on the Flora of Palestine, by the Rev. H. Macmillan ; on the Botany of the West of Scotland, by P. Ewing ; on Cystopteris montana in Stirlingshire, by A. Somerville; on Measurements of Trees, by R. M'Kay and J. Renwick (two plates) ; and other botanical notes. We note that another botanical "Dr. Robert Brown" takes part in the pro- ceedings of the Society. We are glad to announce the issue of vol. vi. part 1, of the continuation of the Flora Capensis. Dr. Dyer, who undertook to edit the work in 1872, is to be congratulated on this result of his labours, of which we hope to speak more at length on a future occasion. This part contains the Iridece and the beginning of the AmaryllidecBy and is entirely the work of Mr. J. G. Baker. , The third part of Dr. Bretschneider's valuable and learned Botanicon Sinicum (Hongkong and Singapore, Kelly & Walsh) has just reached us. It is devoted to "botanical investigations into the materia medica of the ancient Chinese," and forms a volume of over 600 pages. The Gardeners' Chronicle for April 25th has a long notice of the collection of water-colour drawings of Australian plants by Mrs. F. C. Rowan, now on exhibition at Messrs. Dowdeswell's Galleries in Bond Street. " Many of the plants," says the Chronicle, " are new to botanists, and come from parts of Australia hitherto not trodden by the white man"; and the preface to the catalogue states that they have been " obtained at great personal risk, and nearly always under most trying circumstances." The drawings are very beautiful, and merit the praise bestowed upon them. The Chronicle
