328 Varietäten, Descendenz, Hybriden. 



not be brought to maturity. Furthermore, there was a large amount 

 of sterility in the pollen (about 50%) and to almost as great a 

 degree in the seeds produced by the Regeneration. For these rea- 

 sons the author has refrained frotn speculation on the possible 

 ratios that might be suggested for the appearance of classes or of 

 characters on Mendelian hypotheses. The high degrees of sterility 

 both gametic and zygotic present problems of irregularities so great 

 as to render speculation at present most unsafe. Also the parent 

 species have not themselves passed the tests of a pure species, and 

 there are suggestions in the facts of seedsterility in O. franciscana 

 and of pollen-sterility in O. biennis that these species are not strictly 

 homozygous. Mendelian studies on the Oenotheras seem to the 

 writer at present to be quite hopeless except as they are concerned 

 with parent raaterial exhaustively tested for its genetic purity or of 

 which the genotypes are most thcroughly known. 



M. J. Sirks (Wageningen). 



Harris, J. A., Studies on the correlation ofmorphologi- 

 cal and physiological characters: the development of 

 the primordial leaves in teratological bean seeds. (Gene- 

 tics. I. p. 185—196. 1916.) 



The purpose of the present paper is to publish the results of 

 one attempt to determine something of the more fundamental phy- 

 siological characteristics to which incapacity for survival may be 

 due. In the seed, the primordial leaves of the bean are minute 

 structures. If innate physiological conditions of a kind which may 

 affect growth be associated with morphological variations, one 

 might expect some influence of these factors to be recorded in the 

 size or other characteristics which result from the relatively enor- 

 mous expansion which these organs undergo in the course of ger- 

 mination and the establishment of the young seedling. This study 

 was undertaken to determine whether the influence of such factors 

 is discernable. 



The writer could show that the weight of primordial leaf tissue 

 developed by morphologically aberrant seedlings of Phaseolus vul- 

 garis is on the average less than that produced by normal controls 

 grown under conditions as nearly as possible comparable. So far as 

 determined, a reduction in the volume of primordial leaf tissue 

 occurs irrespective of the kind of abnormality. The type of abnor- 

 mality does, however, determine within wide limits the degree of 

 reduction in the amount of leaf tissue. 



A first attempt has been made to ascertain by means of the 

 conductivity and freezingpoint methods, whether there are differen- 

 ces in the concentration in molecules and ions in the cell sap of 

 the leaves of teratological and normal plants. The evidences suggest 

 that there may be a lower concentration of both electrolytes and 

 total solutes in the tissue fluids of the teratological plants. If, on 

 more extensive investigation, this should prove to be true, it would 

 be quite in agreement with the results for leaf weight, indicating 

 that the morphologically aberrant individuals have a smaller capa- 

 city for absorbing electrolytes or for synthesizing electrolytes and 

 non electrolytes. The differences are, however, so slight and so 

 variable that further and more refined determinations will be neces- 

 sary to demonstrate the existence of any relationship. So far as 

 data are available, they demonstrate merely that no clear difference 



