1906] CURRENT LITERATURE 155 
is difficult to see how this conception can be applied to individual mycelia or to 
Spores, or even to the process of germination, as is done repeatedly by the author. 
Perhaps the introduction of new terms is superfluous in this case, for the idea is 
well expressed by the older terms dioecious and monoecious. These are used 
in reference to algae, where the condition thus designated exists.—H. HAsset- 
BRING. 
Fixation of nitrogen.—The Agricultural Research Association, a Scottish 
society which has its station at Glasterberry near Aberdeen, has published in its 
Report for 1905 a paper by the Director of Research, THomMAs JAMIESON,'? Chev. 
Fr., F. I. C., which is supposed to overthrow the current knowledge as to the 
fixation of nitrogen by the root tubercle organisms and to prove that plants of 
many sorts utilize the nitrogen of the air directly by means of the hairs with which 
the leaves are furnished. The laudations with which this pretended “‘research”’ 
was received at the annual meeting by men even more ignorant of the subject 
than the “director of research,” are really worthy of a place in comic literature, 
were it not for its serious side in giving local currency at least to foolish notions. 
The “research” itself is its own condemnation, and shows the ‘‘director”’ 
to be as ignorant of chemistry as of the physiology and anatomy of plants. Here 
1S a serious society in Scotland, spending money for that which is not bread, 
lauding an imposture as a wonderful discovery, publishing a report with twelve 
colored plates illustrating the ‘‘albumen generators” imagined by a man who does 
not know the difference between surface hairs and the spiral tracheae of ‘Holly 
laurifolia”! Further it summarizes the previous ‘‘leading results” of this same 
“director; ” among which we note the discovery that there is “‘an aperture in 
root hairs by which the absorption of insoluble matter is explained;”” and that 
the “feathery structures in the flowers of cereals and grasses are not essential 
Parts of the pistil but serve to drive out the anthers to the air”! 
_ Yet we can hardly bring a railing accusation against the misled members of 
this society when our own postoffice department has had recently to deny the 
use of the mails, to prevent our own people from being swindled, to a rascal 
Who is advertising “vineless potatoes,” that produce a large crop of tubers when 
Planted in wet sawdust and watered with “potatine” at $4.50 per! Truly, some 
botanical training might save the farmer from his foolish as well as his knavish 
friends.—C. R. B. . 
Corky celltayers in monocotyledons.—MULLER describes® in detail the 
cutinized membranes in the root and stem of Convallaria majalis, viz., epiblem 
“overing the root-cap, intercutis of greater or less thickness in the cortex of root 
WR wer ne ee 
; *7 JAMIESON, THomas, Report for rg05 to Agricultural Research Association. 
vO. pp. 8r. 1905. 
di ® Mttter, Hewrrcy, Ueber die Metacutisierung der Wurzelspitze und iiber 
ms © segaen Scheiden in den Aehren der Monocotyledonen. Bot. Zeit. 64:53-84- 
+ J+ 1906 
