A FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 



OF THK 



IMPERIAL DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOR THE WEST INDIES. 



Vol. XII. No. 287. 



BARBADOS, APRIL 26, 1913. 



Fbiob Id. 



CONTENTS. 



Paok. 



Agricultuif, Explosives in 13fi 

 Animal, Veiilict of the ... 141 

 Cotton Nor.Hs: — 



West IniUiiu Cotton ... KU 

 Kxotics, Inti' iluction of... 132 

 Flench Antilles and the 



Paniiiiia Canal J37 



Fungus Notes : — 



Red Rot Fungus and the 

 Sugar-cane in tlie West 



Indies, {'ait II 142 



(Jcimination, Eti'ects of Man- 



urial Salts on 136 



Gleanings 140 



Heredity, Recent Work on 129 

 Insect Notes : I 



Root Borers and Other 

 Grulis in West Indian 



Soils 138 



Market Reports 144 



Mioro-Oiganic Population 

 of the Soil, Complexity 



of 134 



Moz,iml)i<iue, Wild Silk 

 Cocoons fri in 137 



Notes and Comments 

 Orange. St. Michael's 



Park. 



... 136 

 ... 132 



Pkuu'h Hitch, Effect of 

 on Draft 131 



Rice Soils, Effect of Di.i.in- 

 age on 137 



Ruljber, World's Produc- 

 tion and Consumption 1,32 



St Kitts Agricultural and 

 Industrial Show, 1913... Kii 



Students' Corner 141 



Subsoil Water 133 



Sugar-cane, Value of Upper 

 and liinver Halves of ... 130 



Tropical Plants, Perio- 

 dicity of 137 



Tropical I'ni versify, Ameri- 

 can Viiwson 131 



TuberciiL isis, Campaign 

 against 131 



Tuberculosis Conference in 

 Trinidad. i:l!) 



West Indian Products ... 143 



Recent Work on Heredity. 



I URIXG the past ten year.s our conception of 

 eredity has undergone a transformation. 

 It was formerly the current idea that 

 specific differences in organisms arose gradually through 

 the cumulative action of natural selection, yec about 

 the way in which these gradations were carried from 

 generation to generation, nothing was known. Of late 

 years, however, investigation has turned upon this sub- 

 ject of transmission of characters, and having first re- 

 sulted in the rediscovery of JMendels Law, it eventually 

 gave rise to the current theory of mutations and the 



luminous conception of Discontinuity. It is now believed 

 that specific characters exist as indivisible units, some- 

 what analogous to the chemical atoms. These units 

 are present in the male and female generative germ 

 cells, and heredity consists in their transmission from 

 generation to generation, and mutation is probably 

 a redistribution in their airangement through hybridi- 

 zuion. Such is a brief outline of the basis on which 

 the work of the modern breeder is conducted. 



besides providing much that is of interest to the 

 West Indies, a good idea of modern lines of investiga- 

 tion in genetics is to be seen in the papers read at the 

 Fourth International Confeience on Genetics held in 

 Paris during 1911, the fall report of which has 

 recently been issued. In the first place, during this 

 conference, there were two papers read by W.Lawrence 

 Balls and b}' W. A. ( )rcon, respectively, dealing 

 almost entirely with the breeding of cotton. It is 

 a significant fact that the results obtained were 

 for the most part of a complicated nature, but the 

 view was more than once expressed that although the 

 cotton plant is subject to variation — perhaps more 

 so than any other cultivated plant — yet the variation 

 is in no way abnormal, being due to segregations, rever- 

 sions and recombinations of a large number of factors. 

 In Lgypt, pure ne>v types have been bred by crossing 

 Egyptian and American species, and in the same coun- 

 try the transmission of a meristic character has been 

 investigated, namely the inheritance of variations in 

 the number of loculi in the bolls. A segregation 

 was found to occur in the third generation. This 

 matter is of particular interest since the question 

 of variation in the number of loculi has already 

 attracted attention, in a practical way, in the West 

 Indies. Another aspect in the breeding of cotton was 



