156 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 943 



Alabama, through the kindness of Mr. Eobert 

 A. Love, yielded a race which behaved in 

 the same way, and which evidently belongs 

 to the CE. Tracyi described by Bartlett.' 

 The plants, which were grown at the John 

 Innes Horticultural Institution this year, 

 numbering 173, were very uniform and agreed 

 in general with Bartlett's description. They 

 were very tall and stout, much more so than 

 (E. grandiflora, and several plants showed 

 small buds at the end of September. Certain 

 other facts in this connection are referred to 

 in a paper now in press in the Transactions 

 of the Linnean Society. 



In growing scores of wild races belonging 

 to the species (E. iiennis, CE. muricata, CE. 

 grandiflora, CE. argillicola, CE. HooJceri and 

 others from various parts of North America, 

 in the climate of England during the past 

 summer, I have been greatly impressed by the 

 constancy and the peculiarity of each race as 

 regards such physiological characters as the 

 strength of the biennial habit, and the time 

 of blooming. The differences in these re- 

 spects are quite as marked and constant as 

 any morphological characters can be, and in 

 hybrids they are frequently intermediate. 

 Evidently each race is closely adapted to the 

 conditions of the growing season in its own 

 native locality; and within certain limits it is 

 possible to predict what the behavior of a race 

 will be when one knows the latitude and cli- 

 matic conditions from which it came. The 

 elucidation of the origin of these racial cli- 

 matic adaptations in CEnothera is a most 

 interesting evolutionary problem. 



K. R. Gates 



Impeeial College op Science, 

 London 



mheeitance of the russet skin in the pear 

 The russet skin occurs commonly in the 

 pear and it is found in amounts varying from 

 per cent, to 100 per cent. In Eagan's 

 " Nomenclature of the Pear " ' are described 

 * Bartlett, H. H., ' ' Systematic Studies on 

 CEnothera. I. CEnothera Tracyi sp. nov.," 

 Ehodora, 13: 209-211, pi. 93, 1911. 



> U. S. Dept. Agrie., B. P. I. Bull. 126, 1908. 



547 varieties having no russet, and 772 varie- 

 ties having a very light to a solid russet cover- 

 ing. In the latter class only 16 are given as 

 simply " russet " ; however, several others, as 

 the Bosc, should come under this head. The 

 low number of russet individuals indicates 

 that the russeting is recessive to the smooth- 

 skinned condition, and that many of the 

 partially russeted and smooth-skinned pears 

 must be heterozygous — the dominance of the 

 smooth-skinned condition being frequently 

 incomplete. 



The results obtained at the New York Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New 

 York, support such a postulation. In a cross 

 between Kieiler ? and Elizabeth <S, both pa- 

 rents having smooth skins, were obtained two 

 russeted and ten smooth-skinned seedlings. 

 This population is too few in number to allow 

 one to draw definite conclusions; nevertheless, 

 it approaches closely a simple 3 : 1 Mendelian 

 segregation. In a cross between Bosc ? and 

 Kieffer <S, the $ parent having a russet skin 

 and the d parent carrying the russet condi- 

 tion as a recessive 1, there were produced five 

 seedlings — two of which were smooth-skinned 

 and three russeted. The progeny of this latter 

 cross approximate a 1 : 1 Mendelian ratio, viz., 

 one individual is homozygous to the smooth- 

 skinned condition and one individual is het- 

 erozygous to russeting. As a Eusset Bartlett 

 of unknown origin, differing from the normal 

 Bartlett in no character except the skin — even 

 in the self -sterility of the blossoms — is grow- 

 ing on the experiment station grounds, it is 

 reasonable to suppose that the russet condition 

 is due to a loss of a determining factor, for 

 the loss of a character is much more common 

 than the addition of a new one. 



EicHARD Wellington 



New York Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, 

 Geneva, N. T. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



ACADEMY OP SCIENCE, ST. LOUIS 



A MEETING of the Academy of Science of St. 

 Louis was held at the academy building, Monday, 

 November 18, President Englar in the chair. 



