240 NOTES AND COMMENTS [ocroBER 
Inheritance of Malformations. 
THE inheritance of monstrous characters is a subject the examination 
of which may be expected to shed increased hight on many important 
and still obscure questions, though it has hitherto failed to receive the 
attention it deserves. In a recent paper (Revue Générale de Botanique, 
April 1899, pp. 136-151) Hugo de Vries describes the results 
of a series of experiments, which he has for several years successfully 
carried on with regard to the inheritance of accidentally acquired 
fasciations in wild plants. By means of rigid selection and isolation 
of the parents, followed by careful cultivation of the offspring, he has 
been able not only to transmit the peculiarity through several genera- 
tions, but even to increase the deeree of fasciation. On the other 
hand, the tendency to reversion appears to be very strong, and not- 
withstanding the closest attention the resulting races never attain the 
permanency of those ornamental varieties so commonly cultivated in 
gardens. The plants examined were all facultative annuals, that is, 
species which are capable of giving rise to both annual and _ biennial 
individuals, and the differences between these are of some interest, if 
difficult of explanation. The annual forms, for example, never show 
fasciation till late in the season, and the malformation is confined to 
the upper part of the flowermg stem, while those stems which spring 
in the second year from fasciated rosettes are fasciated throughout 
their whole length, and the malformation is more marked than in 
those of only annual duration, though even in these it may be con- 
siderably increased by early sowing under glass, or by any other 
method of cultivation which tends to increase the vigour of the young 
plant previous to the formation of flowering stems. 
The Nucleolus in Heredity. 
THE nucleolus has hitherto played with becoming dignity the some- 
what passive part of a spectator in the nuclear quadrille, but Mr, H. 
H. Dixon (Annals of Botany, vol. xii. June 1899, p. 269) has in 
these latter days dragged it from its inglorious repose, and it must 
now share the labours of the chromatin as a carrier of the hereditary 
substance. During division the chromosomes perform their accustomed 
task, but as soon as the cell enters a resting state the hereditary 
substance is divided between the newly formed nucleoli and the 
chromatic filament, the former taking the dormant idioblasts, which 
are not required for the functional development of the individual cell, 
while the remainder are left in the chromatin. On this hypothesis 
the apparent absence of the reducing division in higher plants is 
accounted for by supposing that the necessary elimination of excessive 
