REVIEWS 1029 



inhabitants of the country assert, moreover, that the pines of Giat fur- 

 nish a wood especially valued in that region. 



Later remarking that pine seed said to have come from Auvergne — 

 though the name is not a very exact one, judging by what has previ- 

 ously been said — has always given, according to the acknowledgment 

 even of German merchants, a remarkably high rate of germination, 

 Hickel concludes in affirming the superiority of the so-called pines of 

 Auvergne over those of Germany. 



This conclusion seems to me at least premature, due to the fact that 

 the origin of the seed used in the plantations visited by Hickel was not 

 exactly determined, and also that there have yet, to my knowledge, been 

 no comparative tests made which yielded closely controlled results. 



Ph. Guinier, who gives the course of lectures in botany at the "Na- 

 tional School of Forests and Streams," in the very remarkable address 

 which he made July 19, 1909, before the general assembly of the So- 

 ciety of Forestry of Franche-Comte-et-Belfort, did not push his studies 

 or his conclusions as far as that. 



Examining first the question of the site variations of the principal 

 forest species, he gives an account of the experiments which were car- 

 ried on with Scotch pine in France by de Vilmorin in the province of 

 Barres ; in Germany by von Sivert, Mayr, and Schott ; in Austria by 

 Cieslar, and in Switzerland by Engler ; on spruce and larch by Cieslar 

 and Engler, and on fir and sycamore-maple by Engler. 



Guinier also devotes some pages to individual variations, citing the 

 case of the pedunculate pyramidal oak, that of the twisted beech of 

 Verzy, and that of the June oak. 



In his lecture Guinier proposed to put the question before the public, 

 with the idea of indicating its importance much more than of solving 

 it, because "his study," he wrote, "is not yet sufficiently advanced." 



I am entirely of Guinier's opinion, and, like him, I ask, that to solve 

 the problem in which he is interested, "comparative and, above all, 

 sufficiently prolonged experiments" be made. 



All the readers of the "Revue des Eaux et Forets" who are inter- 

 ested in the important question of the influence of the source of seed 

 on the quality of the trees derived from them will certainly read with 

 the greatest profit Hickel's article, which appeared in the "Journal 

 d'Agriculture pratique," and the text of Guinier's address published in 

 the "Bulletin de la Societe forestiere de Franche-Comte et Belfort" and 

 in the "Annales de la Science agronomique." 



Beauvais, January, 1910. L. Parde. 



(Translated by Mathilde Ammen.) 



