1913] CURRENT LITERATURE 173 
the living araucarians, becomes evident. Throughout the investigation it is 
assumed that the appearance of a character in response to wounding means 
the recall of an ancestral character. 
e combination of characters that makes the araucarian wood unique 
among living conifers is the close-set and alternating pits of the tracheids, the 
absence of the bars of Sanio, the usual absence of wood parenchyma, an 
much restricted pitting of the ray cells. The wound reactions obtained from 
c with the structure and wound reactions of 
x 
ro) 
sg | 
rob) 
Se 
= i 
OQ 
E 
Oo 
features of the mesozoic forms. It is further shown that the characteristic 
pitting of the tracheids of Araucaria and Agathis is not ancestral, but acquired. 
A very significant result is that obtained from a study of the resin canals, which 
shows that certain mesozoic araucarians possessed traumatic resin canals; and 
even in a living Agathis normal resin canals were found in certain peripheral 
regions. 
The general conclusion is reached that the araucarians are not derived from 
the Cordaitales, since their primitive forms possess a number of features that 
have not been discovered among the Cordaitales. The araucarian type is 
derived from ancestors with opposite (not alternate) pitting, bars of Sanio, 
strongly pitted rays, and horizontal and vertical resin canals. This nig of 
ancestral characters selects Pityoxylon as the ancestral abietineo 
There seem to be no question that the araucarian and abietineous heck blznd 
characters in the Mesozoic, and that recognizable araucarians started with 
numerous abietineous characters that gradually disappeared, until the existing 
araucarians are very distinct.—J. M. C. 
Induction of inheritable changes in plants by ovarial injections.— 
FirtH”, in an apparently preliminary paper, has given the results of experi- 
ments, carried on in the hills of India, wherein it was attempted to produce 
“mutations” by the injections of different salts into the ovaries of plants, and 
so by the use of external conditions in the medium, and the adding of salts 
to the soil water. Pure cultures of Oenothera Lamarckiana, O. tetraptera, 
O. odorata, Epilobium parviflorum, E. cylindricum, and E. hirsutum had been 
kept in the garden and grown in “pure pedigreed strains” from 1906 to 1908. 
These were subjected to different experimental conditions of light relations, 
temperature relations, soil relations, and the injection of salts into the ovaries. 
Positive results seem to have been obtained in E. parviflorum when watered 
TH, R. H., An elementary inquiry as to the origin of species. Jour. Royal 
Army Mestient Comm 162497-504. 1911 
