12 



REVIEWS 



Proceedings: International Conference on Plant Breeding and Hybridization* 



An international conference on plant breeding and hybridiza- 

 tion was held in New York City, September 30 and October i 

 and 2, 1902, and the papers there presented, together with the 

 discussion on them, have been collected and published by the 

 Horticultural Society of New York as Memoirs, Vol i, under 

 the editorship of the secretary of the society, Leonard Barron. 



The programme of the meeting as given in the Memoirs was 

 long as well as comprehensive. Thirty papers were read, thir- 

 teen additional were read by title, and all of these save one are 

 given in the report of the conference. 



Some idea of the scope of the work presented can be had if 

 the titles of half a dozen papers, chosen at random, are given. 

 Professor William Bateson, Cambridge, England, gave " Prac- 

 tical Aspects of the new Discoveries in Heredity"; Mr. W. A. 

 Orton, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, " On the Breeding of Disease- 

 resistant Varieties "; Mr. L. C. Corbett, U. S. Dept. of Agricul- 

 ture, " Improvement of Roses by Bud Selection "; Professor 

 William Saunders, Director of the Central Experimental Farm, 

 Ottawa, Canada, " Results of Hybridization and Plant Breeding 

 in Canada", and, to cite but one additional title, M. P. de Vil- 

 morin, Paris, P'rance, "The everbearing Strawberry." 



Naturally the work of the earlier hybridizer, Gregor Mendel, 

 was repeatedly referred to and was the central idea of several 

 papers, particularly those of Bateson and de Vries. 



Professor Bateson presented his now well-known views on the 

 nature of the sex cells, or gametes, and their relation to the 

 segregation of inheritable characters. He showed, among other 

 things, that hybrids with certain characters fixed ari.se by the 

 union of equivalent gametes (equivalent as regards the character 

 in question), to use his terminology such arc homozygotes, and 

 that, on the other hand, unstable hybrids arc produced as a re- 

 sult of the union of gametes unlike as being bearers of the char- 



* Proceedings International Conference on Plant IJrceding and 1 lyljiidi/.ation. 

 Memoirs Hort. Soc. New York, i : 1-271. 1904. 



