148 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
be successful, arrangements might possibly be made to extend the cultivation
of important types of the lower orders of plants, such as fungi, mosses, ferns,
liverworts, &c., and also of aquatic plants. Battersea, Ravenscourt, and Vic-
toria Parks have been selected for the first experiments, the total costs of
which must not exceed £200. Battersea Park is already famous for its fine
sub-tropical gardens, which are greatly appreciated by botanists.
FUNGI.
Notes on Microscopic Fungi.—Aecidium leucospermum, D.C., the
Anemone Cluster-cup. As this species is stated to be rare in this country (Dr.
M. C. Cooke writing, "we have found it but seldom, though often in search of
it;" and Dr. Plowright observing of it "rare in Britain") it may be of
interest to record the species for Essex. It was found on leaves of Anemone
nemorosa, in a wood near Witham, in May and June last, I believe that this
is the first record for our county.
Puccinea betonicae. Alb. and Schw. Betony Brand. This occurred to me
on leaves of Stachys betonica, growing on a piece of waste land in the parish
of Little Braxstead, in the month of June.—Edwin E. Turner, Coggeshall,
Essex, July 5th, 1899.
New locality for Polyporus umbellatus, Fries.—Mr. E. W. Swanton
writes in the Journal of Botany (vol, xxxvi., 399) to "place on record another
locality for this rare and interesting fungus, hitherto only recorded from
Epping Forest. A few days ago I received a specimen gathered from a wood
at Inval, near Haslemere. This species is allied to P. intybaccus [which also
occurs in Epping Forest] and differs in the numerous much-branched pileoli
being circular and depressed ; in P. intybaceus they are dimidiate."
PALAEONTOLOGY.
The New Fossil Bird (Prophaeton shrubsolei) from the London Clay.—
The Standard of July 27th, 1899, had the following particulars of this interest-
ing discovery :—"The British Museum (Natural History) has acquired a very
interesting fossil bird, which was recently discovered in the Isle of Sheppy,
enclosed in a large nodule of London Clay, by Mr. W. H. Shrubsole. The
remains, consisting of skull, pelvis, thigh-bone, and shoulder-bone, have been
carefully worked out of the clay matrix at the Museum, and determined by
Mr. C. W. Andrews, B.Sc. of the Geological Department, to be a hitherto
unknown form of the Order Steganopodes (now represented in this country
by the Gannet, Cormorant, and Shag), in which all the four toes are united
by a web. He believes that it was allied to the Frigate-birds, and more
closely to the Tropic-bird, both of which are now practically confined to the
tropical regions. There is, however, a striking difference in the size of the
hind limbs, which are relatively much larger in the newly-discovered fossil
than they are in the living Tropic-birds, in which, as in the Frigate-birds,
they have undergone great reduction, owing to these species having aban-
doned the habits of diving and swimming common to other members of the
order. The Frigate-birds are as great robbers as the Skuas, their chief
victims being the Gannets, while the Tropic-birds are surface feeders, picking
up fish that swim near the top of the water. But these birds spend most of