936 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1043 



of the genus. Even tte author himself shows 

 the fallacy by his drawings, by a statement at 

 bottom of page 37Y, by his omission of other 

 spore forms in describing the several species, 

 and in his ability to include a species which 

 had not before been assigned to the genus 

 without having seen other than uredinio- 

 spores. The attempt to base modern procedure 

 on antiquated and discredited ideas, which this 

 instance well illustrates, accounts for the un- 

 fortunate rule of the Brussels Congress throw- 

 ing out all names for priority not applied to 

 the telial stage. It is this rule which the 

 author is trying to follow. 



There is much to be commended in the 

 author's attempt to bring together so-caUed 

 species which might more properly be con- 

 sidered races or varieties. His nomenclatorial 

 method of using a collective name and descrip- 

 tion under which constituents are maintained 

 as if autonomous is, however, contrary to De 

 Candolle's fundamental law of nomenclature 

 that a plant can only bear one name of the 

 same grade, a law that has been upheld by 

 every botanical congress since its enunciation 

 in 1813. If Puccinia DigrapMdis, P. Orchi- 

 dearum-Fhalaridis, P. Winteriana and P. 

 Phalaridis are to be grouped as biological 

 races under Puccinia sessilis, which seems 

 quite correct, the nomenclature should be ad- 

 justed accordingly. We hope with the author 

 that some one may be found with "more 

 knowledge, or more courage," as he says in the 

 preface, to carry this process to other forms. 



It requires both more knowledge and more 

 courage to advance the lines of classification 

 beyond familiar grounds than most authors 

 are willing to incorporate in their works. To 

 illustrate from the work before us: On pages 

 73-75 the author technically describes the five 

 families of the order Uredinales and gives a 

 key to the twenty-two genera into which the 

 British species may be distributed, using the 

 now generally accepted succession beginning 

 with the fern rusts and ending with Uromyces 

 and Puccinia, but in the systematic part of 

 the volume the order is reversed to accord with 

 the old and more familiar way. If the makers 

 of manuals will not incorporate what they 



believe to be the best knowledge available, how 

 can the general student get a working famil- 

 iarity with it? Too great conservatism is 

 as injurious to the diffusion of substantial 

 information as too pronounced radicalism. 



The author deplores the lack of a suitable 

 way to subdivide the genus Puccinia with its 

 enormous number of species, " more than 

 1,300 are already known." After discarding 

 Schroter's and Fischer's classifications because 

 they " separate nearly allied species," he says 

 "Arthur's is a pathless chaos," and decides to 

 arrange the species according to hosts, instead 

 of introducing a "new imperfect scheme." It 

 is evident that the author did not master the 

 classification proposed by the writer, which 

 is founded upon the combination of life his- 

 tories and morphological characters. That 

 classification can justly be called imperfect, 

 but not artificial, and by no manner of means 

 chaotic. It is imperfect because more informa- 

 tion is demanded than was available when it 

 was proposed, and must be emended and 

 changed to accord with knowledge as it comes 

 to hand, as likely to occur in the establish- 

 ment of a natural system of any group of 

 plants. 



The author has not indicated whether the 

 spore-forms which he describes under each 

 species are all the spore-forms belonging to the 

 species, or not, and without such information 

 species can not be distributed in the Arthur 

 system. How to ascertain this important item 

 was pointed out by the writer in 1904. 

 Puccinia hullata, for instance, is credited with 

 pycnia, uredinia and telia, but no mention is 

 made of aecia, and Puccinia Oalthae has 

 pycnia, aecia and telia described, but no ure- 

 dinia. About one half the species in the book 

 are thus lacking in definite information. It 

 is no wonder the author saw in the Arthur 

 system only " a pathless chaos." 



J. C. Arthur 



Purdue Univeesitt, 

 Lafayette, Indiana 



Texfbooh on Wireless Telegraphy. By Eupert 

 Stanley, Professor of Physics and Elec- 

 trical Engineering, Municipal Technical 



