PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 



BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY. 



Professor Mayr, whose attitude towards 



Damping the recent theories regarding the hereditary 



off influences which may be propagated by 



Disease seeds from certain locaHties has been 



Hereditary. rather heterodox, reported to the meeting 



of the International Association of Forest 



Experiment Stations the results of his experiments to show the 



hereditariness of the damping off disease, or "Schiitte," produced 



by Lophodermium pinas.tri. 



In his article he discusses first the general question of heredi- 

 tariness. With considerable inconsistency he ridicules the as- 

 sumption that straight form or spiral growth, early or late leafing, 

 are hereditary and not merely results of climatic influences, but 

 that the damping off disease is hereditary, and that plants de- 

 rived from seeds from certain localities are liable to it more than 

 those from other localities. 



Experiments with Norwegian and Finnish seed of Scotch Pine, 

 in comparison with such from middle Germany, induced the 

 author to consider the northern pine "not as mere climatic 

 variety or local race, but as a species by itself." 



A further series of experiments with seeds from some eight 

 localities, not all quite sure of its derivation, lead him to declare, 

 that 



(i) "the northern (Norwegian and Finnish) pine is free from 

 the disease. To be sure, the young plants sicken, the needles be- 

 coming red, but the basis of the needles remains healthy. They 

 bud the next year and only a small percentage succumbs, even 

 under most unfavorable conditions. The 12-year-old sowings are 

 still healthy and vigorous in the seedbed. They grow straight as 

 an arrow (hereditary?!) with shorter needles with reddish buds, 

 but they grow slower than those of the next groups ; 



(2) "pines from middle Europe, including those from Scot- 

 land, Holland, Belgium, Germany to the base of the Alps, Kur- 

 land, Livland, middle Russia, are sensitive to the disease, which 

 under some unknown conditions fails entirely to appear or under 

 other conditions leads to the loss of all plants ; 



