76 



the Garden staff assisting in the demonstrations. The lectures 

 are dehvered to groups of 700 to 800 children, who are after- 

 wards arranged in squads of 40 or 50 for the demonstrations. 



Professor Hugo de Vries, whose visit to America last year 

 was such a genuine pleasure to all who met him, has just pub- 

 lished a volume of 438 pages on his impressions of America 

 under the title " Naar Californie " illustrated with numerous half- 

 tones. He includes chapters on the land and people, fruit cul- 

 ture, new varieties of fruit (with an account of two visits to Lu- 

 ther Burbank), irrigation, and the mountains and flora, ending 

 with " Persoonlijke Herinneringen," giving account of his land- 

 ing at New York, the commencement exercises at Columbia 

 University, where he received the degree of Doctor of Science, his 

 journey to California by the way of the Desert Laboratory at 

 Tucson, and his return by the northern route including a stop 

 at Chicago where he made the convocation address and received 

 a second honorary doctorate at the University of Chicago. The 

 work is full of botanical observations, as might be expected by 

 those who know its writer personally. 



In Bulletin no. 71 of the Bureau of Plant Industry, entitled 

 "Soil Inoculation for Legumes," Dr. George T. Moore brings 

 to the attention of the public another triumph of modern botani- 

 cal science in its relation to agriculture. It has long been known 

 that certain bacterial organisms living in the roots of leguminous 

 plants and commonly causing tubercles upon them have the 

 power of fixing free nitrogen, which is later taken advantage of 

 by the host plants. Leguminous plants with root-tubercles are 

 not only, as a rule, especially in a sterile soil, much more vigor- 

 ous than those that are destitute of them, but the soil upon 

 which they grow and decay is thereby enriched in nitrogenous 

 materials as well as in the carbon compounds. Dr. Moore and 

 his associates in the Bureau of Plant Industry have now perfected 

 an inexpensive method of inoculating the soil with the proper 

 microorganism. More than 12,000 tests have been made by 

 practical farmers upon various leguminous crops and in nearly 

 all the states of the Union, and the reports indicate a distinct 



