24 o NOTES AND COMMENTS [october 



Inheritance of Malformations. 



The inheritance of monstrous characters is a subject the examination 

 of which may be expected to shed increased light on many important 

 and still obscure questions, though it has hitherto failed to receive the 

 attention it deserves. In a recent paper {Revue Ge'ne'rale de Botanique, 

 April 1899, pp. 136-151) Hugo de Vries describes the results 

 of a series of experiments, which he has for several years successfully 

 carried on with regard to the inheritance of accidentally acquired 

 fasciatious in wild plants. By means of rigid selection and isolation 

 of the parents, followed by careful cultivation of the offspring, he has 

 been able not only to transmit the peculiarity through several genera- 

 tions, but even to increase the degree of fasciation. On the other 

 hand, the tendency to reversion appears to be very strong, and not- 

 withstanding the closest attention the resulting races never attain the 

 permanency of those ornamental varieties so commonly cultivated in 

 gardens. The plants examined were all facultative annuals, that is, 

 species which are capable of giving rise to both annual and biennial 

 individuals, and the differences between these are of some interest, if 

 difficult of explanation. The annual forms, for example, never show 

 fasciation till late in the season, and the malformation is confined to 

 the upper part of the flowering stem, while those stems which spring 

 in the second year from fasciated rosettes are fasciated throughout 

 their whole length, and the malformation is more marked than in 

 those of only annual duration, though even in these it may be con- 

 siderably increased by early sowing under glass, or by any other 

 method of cultivation which tends to increase the vigour of the young- 

 plant previous to the formation of flowering stems. 



The Nucleolus in Heredity. 



The nucleolus has hitherto played with becoming dignity the some- 

 what passive part of a spectator in the nuclear quadrille, but Mr. H. 

 H. Dixon {Annals of Botany, vol. xiii. June 1899, p. 269) has in 

 these latter days dragged it from its inglorious repose, and it must 

 now share the labours of the chromatin as a carrier of the hereditary 

 substance. During division the chromosomes perform their accustomed 

 task, but as soon as the cell enters a resting state the hereditary 

 substance is divided between the newly formed nucleoli and the 

 chromatic filament, the former taking the dormant idioblasts, which 

 are not required for the functional development of the individual cell, 

 while the remainder are left in the chromatin. On this hypothesis 

 the apparent absence of the reducing division in higher plants is 

 accounted for by supposing that the necessary elimination of excessive 



