August 21, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



285 



Sutton firm, tells me that in England the 

 amount of red shown by the plants differs 

 greatly according to the soil. Even in the 

 same head, however, we may find remarkable 

 extremes. Sometimes the orange rays are irreg- 

 ularly flecked with red, as if some one had been 

 painting near by, and had accidentally touched 

 them here and there. One plant (F, from cor- 

 natus X pTimulinus} had orange rays, the 

 basal half strongly suffused with red; disc be- 

 fore flowering pale yellow (due to color of 

 disc-bracts), except a small triangular section 

 of rather light purple, its apex not quite reach- 

 ing the center of the disc. A still more sing- 

 ular head {coronatus X annuiLs), with a dark 

 disc 44 mm. in diam., and rays 50 mm. long, 

 had the 27 rays variously colored, in order, as 

 follows : (R = deep chestnut red, rather 

 streaky, on basal haK or more ; T = orange- 

 yellow, with practically no red ; M = medium, 

 between these extremes). YREEMMMT 

 YTERYYTTEEEREEMTYYY. 

 Are we to suppose that in these cases irreg- 

 ularities have arisen in the course of the 

 somatic cell-divisions, the whole plant being 

 in an unstable condition as regards the factor 

 for red? Could cytological studies throw any 

 light on this? 



A certain analogy may perhaps be found in 

 the occurrence of fasciation in our lenticularis 

 caronatus X annuus plants. A very f asciated 

 plant, crossed with presumably normal ones 

 through the agency of the bees, gave seven E^ 

 plants, of which two showed fasciated heads, 

 but others exhibited variously split and divided 

 rays. Here it seemed that a weakness existed, 

 but in some cases only found expression in 

 the most peripheral parts, and to a relatively 

 slight degree. Another set of plants with a 

 fasciated parent showed what looked like super- 

 numerary rays, but they were actually extra 

 elongated lobes borne on the ray florets. 



Davis and Salmon^ have described etiolated 

 or sterile dwarfs which arose in CEnothera and 

 Humulus. We have obtained the same thing 

 in sunflowers, from heterozygous coronatus. 



6 B. M. Davis, American Naturalist, Aug., 191.3, 

 p. 453 et seq. E. S. Salmon, Jour, of Genetics, 

 February, 1914, p. 195. 



A family of thirteen plants had the third, fifth, 

 seventh, ninth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth 

 dwarf and mostly etiolated. With the best 

 care we could give them, all died but two, 

 though the normal members of the series, grow- 

 ing in the same row, showed no evidence of 

 adverse conditions. The two survivors (Nos. 

 12 and 13) finally' flowered at a height of 30 

 and 27 inches, respectively;^ one (12) had the 

 disc orange; the rays, bright lemon siiffused 

 with orange, long and slender, curled. The 

 other (13) had the disc dark; the rays very 

 short, suffused with red at base. No. 12 pro- 

 duced much pollen; but 13 had the anthers 

 all aborted, shrivelled up within the corolla 

 tube, producing only a very little pollen, pre- 

 sumably not viable. The pistils of 13 were 

 fully exserted and normal, but nothing could 

 be seen of anthers or pollen except on dis- 

 section. T. D. A. COCKERELL 

 University op Colorado 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



THE anthropological SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON 



At a special meeting of the society held March 

 24 at the National Museum, Dr. Albert Hale, of 

 the Pan-American Union, addressed the society on 

 "Modern Argentina," illustrating his remarks 

 with lantern slides. The ethnical elements of Ar- 

 gentina may be best studied in immigration sta- 

 tistics. Of the total number of immigrants arriv- 

 ing in 1857-1912, 4,248,355, more than one half, 

 or 2,133,508, were Italians. The Spaniards num- 

 bered scarcely more than half as many as the 

 Italians, or about 1,298,122. Other European 

 races were represented by much smaller numbers 

 than these. The French numbered only 206,912 

 and the Russians, 136,659. Next to these came the 

 Syrians, of western Asia, with 109,234; then the 

 Austrians and Germans, with 80,736 and 55,068, 

 respectively. The Britons numbered nearly as 

 many as the Germans, or 51,660. The Swiss, Bel- 

 gians and Portuguese', numbered about 20,000 or 

 30,000 each; the Danes and Dutch, 7,000 each; 

 the North Americans, 5,500; the Swedes, 1,700, and 

 others 79,251. The relative proportions of Italians 

 and Spaniards. arriving during 1912 were the same 



6 Certam species of perennial sunflowers (H. 

 fiUformis, ciliaris and cinereus) are normally as 

 small as this. 



