43 
Numerous collecting trips by various members of the staff 
have also served to enrich our herbarium and the local flora 
section of our plantations. 
lant Breeding —Investigations of heredity, variation and en- 
vironment in peas, castor beans and corn have been carried on 
during the year by Dr. White, resulting in throwing more light 
on the laws governing the heredity of characters in these plants, 
and by extension, on the laws of heredity in general. The chief 
studies are being made in collaboration with the Bureau of Plant 
Industry of the U. S. Department of Agriculture with peas, and 
through help obtained from the Department, and from other 
sources, over two hundred and fifty varieties from all parts of the 
world have been collected and grown in the plant-breeding plots 
of the Garden. Hundreds of crosses between these varieties have 
been made, and through this means, it is hoped eventually to 
make known the manner of inheritance of all the characters 
which distinguish the numerous varieties and species of the genus 
Pisum. The relation of some of these characters to different 
environments is also being studied. It is needless to say that 
such studies ultimately have a direct practical bearing on agri- 
cultural and horticultural practice. At present the work is much 
hampered through lack of sufficient greenhouse space for growing 
winter cultures, and no considerable extension of the summer 
work will be possible unless additional space can be secured for 
out of door cultures. 
In September, Miss Stella G. Streeter, teacher of biology in the 
Jersey City high school, registered for graduate study, and is 
investigating, under Dr. White’s direction, the inheritance of 
seed-coat color and its relation to other characters in peas. 
In addition to the above mentioned studies of the assistant 
curator of plant breeding, Dr. Ralph Curtis Benedict has prose- 
cuted at the Garden his investigations of the varieties of the 
Boston fern (Nephrolepis). Preliminary results of this work 
were embodied in a paper on Orthogenetic saltation in Nephro- 
lepis, read by Dr. Benedict before the Botanical Society of 
America on December 29, at Columbus, Ohio. 
During November the director sent to the editors of numerous 
horticultural journals a list of the varieties of Nephrolepis then 
