262 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:5— May, 1915 



Plant Breeding, L. H. Bailey and Arthur W. Gilbert, p. xviii + 



474. The Macmillan Co. $2.00. 

 Fundamentals of Plant Breeding, John M. Coulter, p. xiv + 347. 



D. Appleton & Co. $ 

 It is significant of the progress we are making in our control ot 

 nature to find such books as these bringing to the average intelli- 

 gent farmer and to the college student the needful facts and pro- 

 cesses in the development of desired new strains and types of 

 plants. The subject matter of the two books is much the same. 

 They start with a discussion of variation. (One chapter in 

 Coulter, four in Bailey & Gilbert.) Then discuss Mutations, 

 Hybridization, Heredity, Mass Culture, Pedigree Culture, The 

 Work now being done in Plant Breeding. Bailey & Gilbert have an 

 extensive bibliography and seventy pages of suggested field and 

 laboratory exercises. Coulter has a chapter on Plant Reproduc- 

 tion, The Theory of Natural Selection, one on Plant Diseases and 

 separate chapters on Mass and Pedigree Cultures. Bailey & 

 Gilbert have four chapters on How Domestic Varieties Originate 

 and on How to Cross Plants. In spite of the differences in chapter 

 headings there are very few subjects treated in one not touched in 

 the other. 



Both books are written in a clear, interesting manner. As one 

 would anticipate from an acquaintance with the other work of the 

 authors, Coulter stresses the problem side of the questions and 

 their bearing on scientific botany while Bailey & Gilbert emphasize 

 the matter from the point of view of breeding as an art. 



Researches on Irritability of Plants, by Jagadis Chunder Bose, xxiv 

 + 376 pp., 190 figs. Longmans, Green & Co. 1913. $2.50. 

 The author of this book has been carrying on researches at the 

 University of Calcutta respecting the irritability of plants. With 

 marvelous patience and persistence he has carried on a remarkable 

 series of investigations the details of which are too abstruse to 

 report here. The work was carried on largely with plants that 

 give a visible reaction to shock as the common sensitive plant. By 

 the use of specially devised apparatus of great delicacy it was 

 possible to secure records of the responses of the plants under a 



