Cactuses are used by the natives of the Soudan for hedging in their villages and gardens. Whether these cactuses, as the opuntia of the Mediterranean sea, have all been introduced from America, deserves closer investigation. Since the genus rhipsalis has been found in the Old World by Welwitsch in Angola, and by Thwaites in Ceylon, the pure American origin of the entire family may be doubted. But the berries of rhipsalis are greedily eaten by birds, and this genus could, therefore, cross the ocean more easily than the others. And the identity of the form found in India with a common American one favors this supposition. - Griseback, Vegetation der Erde. The Authority upon Cactus. - The writings of the late George Englemann are everywhere accepted as the authority upon North American cactacae. A German by birth, he early came to this country and settled in St. Louis. With the duties of a medical adviser, he combined the study of plants in the most critical fashion. He undertook the elucidation of large and difficult groups of plants, and he studied them both in the field and herbarium with consummate skill. He early turned his attention to the comparatively unknown floras of our great west and southwest, and he completed the best studies yet made of the plants of our cactus regions.

He gave particular attention to such difficult genera and families as the cactuses, agaves, yuccas, pines, oaks, dodders, grapes, euphorbias, quill-worts and junci. His collections form the nucleus of the museum of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. He died in 1884, at the completion of his seventy-fifth year. - L. H. B.