CURRENT LITERATURE. 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
Plant breeding. 
A THIRD EDITION of Professor Bailey’s Plant breeding* has just been 
issued. The first edition was issued in 1895,? and since that time remarkable 
changes have taken place in our point of view. As the author remarks, 
‘these years may be said to have marked a transition between two habits of 
thought in respect to the means of the evolution of plants, from the points of 
view held by Darwin and the older writers fe those arising from definite 
experimental studies in species and varieties.’ The chief practical results to 
plant breeding have been the recognition that not all variations in plants are 
of equal importance, and the belief that the offspring of hybridization follow 
definite laws. And yet the author did not feel justified in recasting the | 
ture on ‘The philosophy of the crossing of plants, considered in reference 
to their improvement under cultivation,” finding that it would largely be only 
a matter of rephrasing. The new matter is introduced in lecture IV, the old 
title “ Borrowed opinions (extracts from representative European writings)” 
being replaced by “‘ Recent opinions: being a résumé of the investigations 
of DeVries, Mendel, and others, and a statement of the current tendencies of 
American plant-breeding practice.” The title is sufficiently explicit to indi- 
cate the contents, and a compact simple statement of these matters is a boon 
to the general reader. It is a matter of interest to note that a bibliographical 
reference in one of Professor Bailey’s papers led DeVries to the discovery of 
Mendel’s publication, an account of which he published in 1900. In this 
chapter 1v DeVries himself has written a section on hybridization. 
It is a satisfaction to see that Professor Bailey has not been sw ept off his 
feet by the swelling tide of Mendelism. The wild prophecies that the appli- 
cation of Mendel’s law will reduce plant breeding to a science of mathemat- 
ical precision find him waiting for proof. Perhaps a good statement of the 
author's attitude is his answer to the question as to what are the great things 
we have learned from these newer studies 
“(1) In the first place, we have been brought to a full stop in respect to 
our ways of thinking on these evolution subjects. (2) We are compelled to 
give up forever the taxonomic idea of species as a basis for studying the 
process of evolution. (3) The experimental method has finally been com- 
* BAILEY, L , Plant breeding, being five lectures upon the amelioration of 
domestic plants. Third edition. pp. xiii-t+ 334. New York: The Macmillan Com- 
ny. 1904. 
2 See Bot. GAZ. 21:175. 1896. 
1904] 471 
