Makch 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



365 



SHORT NOTES 



Mr. Paul B. Sears publishes an interest- 

 ing account of the " Insect Galls of Cedar 

 Point (Ohio) and Vicinity " in the Decem- 

 ber number of the Ohio Naturalist. It is ac- 

 ■companied by four plates in which every gall 

 (63 in number) is figured. 



Dr. M. T. Cook's "Eeport of the Patholo- 

 -gist " of the New Jersey Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, for the year 1913, contains a 

 useful annotated list of the most common 

 diseases of the year, arranged alphabetically 

 by hosts. Apples and potatoes bad the most 

 diseases (13 and 12), with sweet potatoes fol- 

 lowing close with 9, and tomatoes with 7. 



Dr. G. H. Shull continues to publish plant- 

 breeding papers, as " Sex-limited Inheritance 

 in Lychnis dioica," ^ and " A Peculiar Nega- 

 tive Correlation on CEnothera Hybrids." * 



Here may be favorably mentioned A. G. 

 Vestal's "Prairie Vegetation of a Mountain- 

 front area in Colorado " ^ with eight good 

 half-tones and a physiographic map of the re- 

 gion studied (near Boulder). 



In the January number of the American 

 Naturalist Professor E. 0. Jeffrey publishes a 

 vigorous criticism under the title " Sonae 

 Fundam.ental Morphological Objections to the 

 Mutation Theory of De Vries." The writer 

 concludes that "hybridism is the best expla- 

 nation yet put forward of the peculiar con- 

 duct of CEnothera lamarchiana, as well as 

 other species of the genus in cultures." Ap- 

 parently this is also the conclusion reached by 

 Professor B. M. Davis in the same number of 

 the Naturalist in his article "Professor De 

 Vries on the Probable Origin of CEnothera 

 lamarcTciana." 



Two new botanical journals. Journal of 

 Agricultural Research and American Journal 

 of Botany merit favorable notice here. The 

 first is published by tt© United States De- 



3 Zeit. of induktive Ahstam. u. Vereri., Bd. XII., 

 Heft 5. 



iJour. of Genetics, Vol. IV., No. 1. 



5 Bat. Gaz., Vol. LVIII., No. 5 



partment of Agriculture, and the second is 

 the official publication of the Botanical So- 

 ciety of America. The first is by no means 

 wholly botanical, and yet the articles dealing 

 with plants, while tinged by some economic 

 coloring, are of interest to the scientific botan- 

 ist also. The second has taken high rank 

 from the first in the literature of scientific 

 botany. Its ofiice of publication is the Brook- 

 lyn Botanic Garden. 



It inspires hope to find that the " part " 

 of the " North American Flora " which ap- 

 peared December 31, 1914, is the first part of 

 the final volume (34), but this hope of early 

 completion is much dampened when we find 

 that this part brings the total number of pages 

 now printed up to about 2,000, which is only 

 about one ninth of what the whole work will 

 contain. It would not be fair, however, to 

 estimate that since it has taken more than 

 nine years to print this much (one ninth) it 

 will require nine times as long, i. e., about 

 one hundred years, to complete the Flora, for 

 it must be remembered that authors have been 

 at work on most of the volumes for the past 

 ten years, and that we shall soon have a rapid 

 appearance of successive parts. This partic- 

 ular part, which is principally from the hand 

 of Dr. Eydberg, begins the tribe Helenieae of 

 the family Carduaceae, and carries it into 

 the tenth of the fourteen sub-tribes. 



Charles E. Bessey 



The University of Nebraska 



SPECIAL ABTICLES 



A FOURTH MALLOPHAGAN SPECIES FROM THE 



HOATZm 



The hoatzin is a curious, rather pheasant- 

 like. South American bird, which is the only 

 species in the strongly aberrant family Opis- 

 thocomidse, a family that is usually even 

 ranked as a distinct avian order. This order 

 or family, which is to say, this bird, has long 

 been and still is a puzzle to the classifying 

 ornithologists. Its genetic aifinities are quite 

 uncertain, although the approved general 

 practise of the bird books is to put the family 

 into a pigeon-hole next to that of the pheas- 



