1904] CURRENT LITERATURE (227 
Miss EpirH Cuick? has had an opportunity to examine a few seedlings of 
the Californian species of Torreya, a genus of the Taxaceae of special interest to 
the morphologist and of peculiar inaccessibility. The meager results confirm 
the preconceived opinions as to the primitive character of the genus. In the 
cotyledons there is such a primitive character as the presence of centripetal 
wood, while the lobing and adhesion of the cotyledons is a feature shared 
with such genera as Ginkgo and Zamia.— 
IN A BULLETIN of the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, 
Stevens and Sackett ® describe a new wilt disease of the tobacco which has 
caused much damage in Granville county. Happily it is yet rather local, but 
it seems to be spreading. It appears to be due to bacteria which plug the 
tracheids and blacken the xylem, infection seeming to come through the roots. 
The disease becomes more and more intense with each crop and will necessi- 
tate the abandonment of affected fields unless means of prevention can be 
found or an immune race can be bred. —C. R. B 
ARBER™ has presented to the Geological Society of London a paper 
describing the flora of the Cumberland coal-field. He enumerates twenty 
species from the Sandstone series and twenty-two from the productive 
measures. The lower beds of the Sandstone series are held to belong to the 
middle coal measures and the upper to the Transition coal measures. The 
productive measures are considered as of middle coal-measures age, the 
paleobotanical evidence for this conclusion being substantiated by the mol- 
luscan remains in the overlying strata. The paper, while describing no new 
Species, is an admirable contribution to local stratigraphy. It is illustrated by 
two plates of the more interesting species and concludes with a brief bibli- 
ography.—E. W. BERRY. 
ZELENY™ has investigated the changes which take place in the position 
and size of leaflets of palmately compound leaves when one lateral leaflet is 
removed as early as possible. The remaining leaflets tend to form a new 
symmetrical system having one less member. This is attained chiefly by the 
movement of those leaflets which are left in an asymmetrical position with ref- 
erence to the petiole. In Lupinus albus there was a frequent rotation of the 
leaf which placed the petiole in an interval different from that occupied by it 
when the operation was performed. Comparison of these leaves with the 
CHICK, oo The seedling of Zorreya myristica. New Phytologist 2: 83-91, 
pls. cs 
STE s, F. L., and SackETT, W.G., The Granville tobacco wilt; a preliminary 
sates me 188, N. C. Agr. Exp. Sta. 1903. 
* ARBER, E, A. N., Fossil flora of the Cumberl I 
evidence with regard to the age of the beds. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. Lond. 59: 1-2 
ga 903. 
“ ZELENY, CHARLES, The dimensional relations of the members of compound 
leaves, Bull. N. Y. Bot. Garden 3: 134-174. figs. 13. 1903. 
a 2.44 3 4} Lat H 1 
