1905] CURRENT LITERATURE 313 
MINOR NOTICES. 
A SECOND REPORT to the Evolution Committee of the Royal Society has been 
made by BATEson, SAUNDERS, PUNNETT, and Hurst,3 under the subtitle “ Experi- 
mental studies in the physiology of heredity.”” About two-thirds of this report 
deals with plants and the rest with poultry. The plants used were Datura, 
Matthiola, Salvia Horminum, Ranunculus arvensis, Pisum, and Lathyrus odoratus, 
the most attention being given to Matthiola, Pisum, and Lathyrus. The numer- 
ous experiments present too many important details to permit of adequate review, 
but several features deserve special mention. In Matthiola it is found that two _ 
races which are constantly glabrous when pure-bred may, on crossing, produce 
hoary canescent offspring, and that in certain combinations this hoariness is 
coupled with purple flower-color, both the hoariness and the purple color being 
Tecognizable as atavistic characters. These reversions occur invariably when 
(ream or white-flowered glabrous stocks are crossed with those of any other 
color; but the various sap-colors (e. g., purple, flesh, red, copper, etc.) crossed 
with each other conform strictly to Mendelian expectation in regard to hoariness, 
though with respect to color there is a complication introduced by the presence 
of the atavistic purple in addition to the two parental types. Very similar rever- 
— and half-reversions are also found regularly in sweet peas. Generally 
white was found recessive to all sap-colors, and cream recessive to both white 
and the Sap-colors, so that cream-colored sweet peas are always homozygous 
and can produce nothing but cream-colored offspring. With one exception, 
white crossed with any sap-color gave reversion in the first generation to purple 
om to “painted lady” (red bicolor). This occurrence of two reversionary types 
fives rise to complications -which have not yet been well worked out. 
Perhaps the most novel result is seen in the different behavior of two white- 
flowered strains known to the trade as “Emily Henderson” and distinguishable 
from each other only by the form of the pollen which is either long or round. 
a pollen is generally characteristic of the various strains of sweet pea 
Tound appears to be limited to this one strain of “Emily Henderson, 
and to the various dwarf sweet peas or “Cupids” which are believed to have 
*prung from it. When any pure-bred white-flowered strain having long pollen 
"as crossed with any colored strain the first-generation hybrids were always 
Purple. When white with round pollen was crossed with blue sap-colored, it 
et < Produced F;, but when crossed with red sap-colored the first ———— 
ways painted lady. When pure-bred white “long” was crossed with pure- 
the first generation hybrids were sometimes purple, sometimes 
hi , on the other hand, extracted whites are used, whether they 
long or round pollen, no reversion takes place when they are crossed together, 
and F are all white-flowered 
;. 3 Bateson, W., SAUNDERS, Miss E. R., Punnett, R. C., and Hurst, Cc. C., 
* “ § to the Evolution Committee of the Royal Society. Report II. Experimental 
190s, in the Physiology of heredity. 8vo. pp. 154. London: Harrison & Sons. 
