BATTARREA PHALLOIDES IN BRITAIN 107 



Sowerby's original drawing. In the Kew Herbarium there is 

 a specimen from Sowerby's Herbarium, two specimens from 

 Mr. Frost, Dropmore, and three specimens from Dawson Turner, 

 Norfolk. 



Thus Battarrea 2)halloides has been recorded from : — Norfolk 

 (Norwich, Stoke), Suffolk (Bungay, Yoxford), Cheshire (New 

 Brighton), Surrey (Nork), Bucks (Dropmore), and Gloucester 

 (Temple Guiting). 



THE TERMS HOMOZYGOUS AND HETEROZYGOUS. 



By a. J. WiLMOTT, B.A., F.L.S. 



These terms, referred to by the Rev. E. S. Marshall (Journ. 

 Bot. 1916, p. 10), were introduced into the science of genetics by 

 Prof. Bateson when the rediscovery of Mendel's papers in 1900 led 

 to the sudden new developments in experimental Heredity. 

 Hedlund has latinised them (" homozygotica " and " hetero- 

 zygotica ") and apparently uses them as synonymous with " breed- 

 ing true " and " not breeding true." In some cases he has 

 experimental data as foundations for his use of the terms, but in 

 other cases he uses them putatively. Anyone who wishes to 

 follow modern developments in taxonomic thought must now 

 become acquainted with the main principles of iTiodern work on 

 Heredity and Variation in general, and in particular with the 

 branch of Heredity usually called " Mendelism." In the light of 

 modern work we now know that many former systematic ideas 

 have no foundation in fact. For instance, hybrids are not neces- 

 sarily intermediate in characters between their parents. Should 

 all the characters of one parent be dominant, and all those of the 

 other recessive, the hybrid will to the eye be quite indistinguishable 

 from the parent with dominant characters, as has actually happened. 

 It is also known experimentally that in general reciprocal crosses 

 are identical, and at any rate that it is impossible to distinguish 

 the male parent by inspection of the hybrid. But although the 

 number of fallacies that are dead increases steadily, the ghosts 

 of most of them may still be seen roaming about systematic 

 literature. 



Hedlund' 3 use of the terms is only partially correct, for 

 they only apply to each individual character under considera- 

 tion. Such characteristics as tallness or shortness, simple or 

 branched stems, hairiness or glabrosity, glandulosity or eglandu- 

 losity, acuteness or obtuseness of the pods of Pisiun, keeled or 

 rounded glumes in wheat, leaf-serration in Urtica inlulifera X U. 

 Dodartii, very many characters in Ccqjsella, the annual or biennial 

 habit, and other structural characters to say nothing of innumerable 

 colour forms, have been shown to follow the laws of Mendelian 

 inheritance; and it is not impossible that even the so-called con- 

 tinuous variation, excluding that small part of it which is definitely 



