NOTES AND NEWS 89 



the author's anatomical-physiological investigations of tropi- 

 cal plants. The experiments were carried out mainly in Cey- 

 lon and include a long series on the transpiration of different 

 tropical plants. "The author's general conclusion from his 

 experiments is that while the highest transpiration figures per 

 hour in the tropics are considerably higher than any northern 

 European ones, yet active transpiration begins later and stops 

 earlier in the day in the case of a damp tropical climate, so 

 the wet season transpiration may cease for weeks at a time." 

 Among the other conclusions of Dr. Holtermann may be 

 mentioned his theory of the function of the water-tissue which 

 he considers an arrangement to supply water to the transpir- 

 ing tissues during the short periods of high water loss. This 

 conclusion is substantiated in various ways. The strand-plant 

 formations are described by the author, as also the damp 

 lowland woods, the dry plains of the north and the east, the 

 upland vegetation, and the epiphytes and the parasites of 

 Ceylon. The final section of the work is devoted to a dis- 

 cussion of direct adaptation, which reactions are classed under 

 irritability, and draws the conclusion, called unwarranted by 

 the revnewer, that such acquired characters in the process of 

 time can be fixed and inherited. 



Professor W . L. Tower, of the University of Chicago, 

 whose extensive experiments by which modifications of beetles 

 were secured by variation in climatic factors have attracted 

 so much attention, is now organizing a new series of trans- 

 planted cultures. One of the largest of these is being estab- 

 lished at the Desert Laboratory at Tucson, where it will be 

 carried on in connection with the acclimatization plantations 

 of that Institution. 



Dr. Geo. H. Shiill, of the Station of Experimental Evo- 

 lution, Cold Spring Harbor, L. I., N. Y., has recently gone 

 to Santa Rosa, California, where he will continue his analy- 

 sis of Mr. Burbank's horticultural results during April and 

 Ma v. 



