NOTES AND COMMENT 



A committee of representative investigators in heredity and varia- 

 tion have announced their intention to inaugurate a new journal en- 

 titled Genetics, provided a substantial body of support can be secured 

 for it. The new periodical will be published bi-monthly, will contain 

 about 600 pages per annum, and the subscription price will be $6 per 

 volume. Dr. George H. Shull, of Princeton University, is the Manag- 

 ing Editor, and he has secured from the Princeton Press a promise of 

 their willingness to manufacture the journal provided they can do so 

 without too great an annual deficit. About seventy-five of the neces- 

 sary two hundred and fifty subscriptions have already been pledged. 

 The proposed size of the journal is exactly equal to the number of pages 

 of American genetical work which Dr. Shull states were published last 

 year in foreign journals. 



At the San Francisco Meeting of the American Association there will 

 be three symposiums on botanical subjects: on the Gymnosperms, on 

 the influences of light upon plants, and on the geographic distribution 

 of plants. The titles to be read in the last of these are as follows : Dr. 

 John W. Harshberger, The Diversity of Ecologic Conditions and its 

 Influence on the Richness of Floras; Prof. D. H. Campbell, Factors 

 Affecting the Distribution of the Components of the Flora of Califor- 

 nia; Dr. Forrest Shreve, The Role of Physical Factors in Determining 

 the Distribution of Plants; Prof. F. E. Clements, Plant Evidences of 

 Climatic Cycles; Succession in the Bad Lands; Dr. W. A. Cannon, Dis- 

 tribution of Cacti with Reference to the Role played by Root-Response ; 

 Dr. W. S. Cooper, The Chaparral and its Habitat, and Plant Succession 

 in the Palo Alto Region. 



A third edition of Chamberlain's Methods in Plant Histology has 

 been issued by the University of Chicago Press. The book presents all 

 of the valuable features of the second edition, at the same time that it 

 embodies the improvements in microtechnique made in the ten years 

 that separate the two editions. A chapter on photomicrographs and 

 lantern slides has been added. The detailed and trustworthy descrip- 



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