556 Angewandte Botanik. 



explorers and correspondents either on its own initiative or when 

 requested to. 



Means of recording these introductions in printed book form, 

 as photographs, as seed or as herbarium specimens. 



Means of fumigating and disinfecting these plants and seeds and 

 minimizing any possibie danger of introducing plant parasites. 



Means of advertising these plants directly to experimenters by 

 miraeographed bulletins of information. 



Means of distributing these plants with proper descriptive labeis 

 to experimenters all over the country. 



Means of recording every one of these distributions in such a 

 way that ten years later it can be hunted down. 



Means of foUowing up the more promising introductions and 

 fostering them to a point where other agencies can take them over 

 and make financial successes of them. 



Means of keeping track in the literature of new plants which 

 come into prominence in foreign agriculture and finding out whether 

 they are worthy of introduction into America. 



M. J. Sirks (Haarlem). 



Fairchild, D., The Kafir orange. (American Breeders Mag. IV. 

 p. 148—153. 1913.) 

 The writer has introduced in 1903 the sweet, perfumed Kafir 

 orange, Strychnos spinosa Lam. from Delagoabay to Florida, 

 where it now has been grown and since 1909 has given each year 

 a considerable number of its remarkable perfumed cannon-ball-like 

 fruits. The author points out, that the species of the genus Strychnos 

 are always suspected of being poisonous, because of their relation 

 with 5. nux vomica, the furnisher of strychine. But there are accor- 

 ding to various authors at least eight species that bear edible fruits: 

 5. dysophylla Benth., S. tonga Gilg, 5. quaqiia Gilg, 5. hehrensiana 

 Gilg and Busse, 5. goetzei Gilg, 5. euryphylla Gilg and Busse, 5. 

 xevophila Baker, 5. hurtoni Baker and 5. spinosa Lam. Enough is 

 now known about them to make the Suggestion worth while that 

 some one who is looking for a problem in plant breeding should 

 get together as many representatives as possibie in an arboretum 

 collection in the tropics, or on the edge of them, and begin the 

 work of improving this remarkable class of fruits through hybridiza- 

 tion and selection, as they then will offer a number of unique fruits 

 to American growers. M. J. Sirks (Haarlem). 



Fleet, W. van, Chestnut breeding experience. (Journ. of 

 Heredity. V. p. 19-25. 1914.) 



Since 1894 the author has made many systematic crossings of 

 the American native sweet chestnut Castanea americana, the bush 

 or Virginia chinquapin, C pumila and the European and Asiatic 

 types. The hykrids were very precocious; the chinquapin-Asiatic 

 Grosses often bearing nuts the third year of growth, the cross-bred 

 Japan varieties showed greatest precocity, frequently blooming and 

 occasionally ripening nuts the second year after germination. The 

 results of an attack of chestnut bark disease were, that trees having 

 C americana in any combination have nearly all disappeared. Seed- 

 lings of Paragon chestnut, the best variety of the European type 

 poliinated with the American native species, attained an average 

 height of twenty-five feet and were bearing excellent nuts when 



