916 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 963 



Species of the Genus Amygdalus," by W. F. 

 Wight. The volume constitutes a fitting trib- 

 ute to the botanist whose life it commemorates. 



Burman's " Flora of Manitoba," which was 

 printed two years ago, contains in a small 30- 

 page pamphlet a general discussion of the 

 yegetation of the province of Manitoba fol- 

 lowed by a list of the species of flowering 

 plants and ferns. It is the only available 

 guide to the plants of that part of Canada. 



Stone's " List of Plants Growing without 

 Cultivation in Franklin, Hampshire and 

 Hampden Counties, Massachusetts " (1913), 

 reminds one of the previous classical lists by 

 Hitchcock and Tuckerman which appeared 

 many years ago under similar titles, and deal- 

 ing with the flora of the Connecticut Valley. 

 It contains 1,493 species of ferns and flower- 

 ing plants, 1,190 of which are native, the re- 

 maining 303 being naturalized. 



Meier's " School and Home Gardens," while 

 dealing with plants, is not botanical, though 

 of interest to many botanists. It is designed 

 primarily to help in the commendable effort to 

 interest children in the planting of seeds and 

 the growing of such plants as may be grovra in 

 the windows of school buildings or out of 

 doors, under ordinary care. It can be com- 

 mended most heartily. 



Allied to the last is E. Benjamin Andrews's 

 "The CaU of the Land" (Judd) dealing 

 largely with out-of-doors, and the things that 

 grow there. While not botanical, it breathes 

 of flowers, and grasses and growing crops, and 

 of the shrubs and trees that make for comfort 

 and beauty and happiness. It is a book dis- 

 tinctly worth while. 



A recent number of the Missouri Botanical 

 Garden Bulletin includes descriptions of the 

 laboratories in the garden, accompanied by 

 four half-tone plates from photographs. Ac- 

 companying the descriptions is a general dis- 

 cussion containing many suggestive sentences, 

 as " Botanical laboratories are the workshops 

 of those who study plants scientifically." " It 

 is to be remembered that the important botan- 

 ical gardens of the world are educational in- 

 stitutions." " In the broadest sense these 



laboratories must represent the possibility of 

 using apparatus and chemicals, books and 

 herbarium specimens, live material from 

 garden or field, and cultures of microscopic 

 organisms." 



A recent circular (113) of the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry contains a suggestive paper on 

 soil bacteriology, by K. F. Kellerman, in which 

 he shows that it is " a subject of almost be- 

 wildering complexity, but very intimately as- 

 sociated with the normal physiology of all 

 crop plants." In a later circular (120) the 

 same author has a short paper on nodule-form- 

 ing bacteria (Bacillus radicicola) which should 

 be helpful to those attempting to inoculate 

 the soil with these organisms. 



Recent numbers of the Botanical Magazine 

 (Tokyo) contain Makino's " Observations on 

 the Flora of Japan," Matsuda's " List of Plants 

 Collected in Hang-chou " (both in English), 

 and Koidzuma's " Morphology, Systematik 

 and Phytogeography of Cupuliferae " (in 

 Japanese), with other shorter articles. 



Charles E. Bessey 



The University of Nebraska 



SPECIAL ASTICLES 



PEELIMESTARY NOTE ON THE RELATIVE PREVALENCE 



OF PYCNOSPORES AND ASCOSPORES OF THE 



CHESTNUT-BLIGHT FUNGUS DURING 



THE winter' 



In studying the dissemination of the chest- 

 nut-blight fungus during the past winter the 

 writers obtained some results that showed 

 that, contrary to the generally accepted opin- 

 ion, pycnospores are produced in enormous 

 numbers and washed down the diseased trees 

 during every winter rain. 



The production of pycnospores was tested 

 by what we have termed pycnospore traps. 

 A part of the rainwater flowing over a canker 

 was conducted down a glass slide and through 

 a mass of absorbent cotton. After each rain 

 the cotton of the traps was brought to the 

 laboratory and a quantitative determination 



^ Investigations conducted in cooperation with 

 Oifiee of Forest Pathology, U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture. 



