1906] CURRENT LITERATURE 217 
laboratory. The inability of the cultures to live is attributed to the method 
of preparation and not to any knavery upon the part “of the commercial 
producers. A test conducted by the authors of this bulletin demonstrated the 
inability of the organism to survive to a satisfactory degree upon the cotton. 
Any intention of opposing the idea of treating the seed of legumes with living 
bacteria is distinctly disavowed. 
It is exceedingly unfortunate that this method should have been given such 
wide publicity and launched as a commercial enterprise until the question as 
to its efficiency had been thoroughly tested.—F. L. Stevens. 
Streaming of protoplasm in mucors.—This go-naten although very 
striking and_easily observed, has been little studied. The ment was noticed 
by WorRoNIN in 1866 in Ascophanus pulcherrimus. It was pears with consid- 
erable detail in a number of species belonging to different genera by SCHROTER, 
writer of the latest account,? in 1897, and the conclusion was drawn that the 
Movement was dependent upon osmotic conditions. A careful study was also 
ment was affected only very slightly by variation in the intensity of light. The 
action of ether, extremes of temperature, pressure, wounds, variation in amount 
of carbon dioxid, was similar to that of the same agents when applied to the 
higher plants. The streaming is found to be due to osmotic action and trans- 
piration and therefore does not occur in a homogeneous substratum, as for instance 
when the fungus is wholly submerged, or in a saturated atmosphere. The stream- 
ing is not a rotation or circulation, as in the hairs of roots and stamens and in the 
cells of Chara, Nitella, Vallisneria, etc., but a backward and forward-movement, 
in which the protoplasm, vacuoles, and nuclei participate. Occasionally the 
acropetal movement is somewhat balanced by a thin peripheral layer of proto- 
plasm without vacuoles setting up a basipetal movement. Usually the movement 
-is toward one end of the hyphae for a longer or shorter time, then stops and 
starts again in the opposite direction —J. C. ARTHUR. 
Germination and radium emanations.—KO6ORNIcKE’® has continued his study 
of the effect of radium emanations on the germination of ungerminated seeds which 
have been exposed in both the dry and wet condition. His earlier tests were made 
with radium bromid contained in glass tubes. In his later study he has used a 
much more powerful mixture which was contained in tubes having one side of 
. 
9 SCHROTER, ALFRED, Ueber Protoplasmastrémung bei Mucorineen.* Flora 95: 
I-30. 1905. satis : 
10 K6RNICKE, M., Weitere Untersuchungen iiber die Wirkung von Réntgen- und 
Radiumstrahlen auf die Pflanzen. Ber. Deutsch. Bot. Gesells. 23: 324-332. 1905. 
