76 The Plant WoRLt). 



NOTES AND COMMENT. 

 We print elsewhere in this issue Mr. Parish's admirable re- 

 view of Leveille's extensive work on the evening primroses. 

 The earlier parts of this publication appeared at a time when 

 interest in the group was keen by reason of their extensive use 

 in De Vries' cultures. The arbitrary treatment, and disregard 

 of much information derived from a field study of these plants 

 displayed, however, caused American botanists to lose 

 interest in this work, and even the account of the cultural work 

 carried out will hardly be able to revive it. It is to be noted 

 that the CEnothera cruciata oi the European gardens is not the 

 species with regular narrowly linear petals known to Americans, 

 but a hybrid, derived from a polHnation of that species with 

 CE. Lamarckiana, as was pointed out by Dr. MacDougal in 1907 

 (See Pub. Carnegie Inst, of Wash., No. 81, p. 58). It may be 

 regarded as a fixed hybrid, but in Leveille's cultures was seen to 

 give rise to a bud sport of one of its ancestors, a phenomenon 

 well known in breeding work. 



Few botanists actively engaged in productive work find 

 leisure to present to the general public readable accounts of what 

 they are doing, and sometimes attempts in this direction are not 

 crowned with perfect success. When it does happen that one 

 who is primarily an investigator and teacher is gifted in this way 

 it seems proper to make a note of it, even if he is still alive. 



One of our leading physiologists contributed to the Popular 

 Science Monthly within the past year a paper on "Formative 

 Influences," the perusal of which has brought joy to the reviewer 

 and the conviction that not only is classical purity of style not a 

 lost art.but also that the botanical fraternity still includes some 

 who possess it. Witness the closing paragraph : 



"The life-experiences of all living things, and even the 

 things themselves, are the joint product of substance and cir- 

 cumstance. Some, if not all, of the substance is continuous, 

 transmitted, from parent to ofifspring; some, but not all, of the 

 circumstance attending this from the beginning to the end of its 

 existence, is continuous. In the continuity of substance and 

 circumstance lies the basis of the likeness of succeeding genera- 

 tions; in the difference of circumstance from time to time lies 

 the basis of the difference which we see between offspring and 



