BOOKNOTES, NEWS, ETC. 175 



Graft Hybrids : the work is to be completed ia three parts, of 

 which the first is now before us. It deals with the direct reci- 

 procal influence of the scion and stock upon each other, and its 

 compilation must have been both laborious and irritating, in- 

 volving as it does the collection and criticism of a great mass of 

 unscientific data with which, up to the present, the serious study 

 of this largely horticultural subject has been cumbered. That 

 Professor Winkler has produced a useful resume of the literature 

 is certain : the chief criticism that can be levelled at his book is 

 the charge of prolixity — a demerit of less importance in a country 

 where copious verbiage is habitual, but objectionable to English 

 readers. The definition of the concept of a hybrid would seem 

 to be unnecessary and laboured, and many of the citations might 

 have been treated much more summarily. Fifty pages are devoted 

 to galls, deformations through parasites and lichens — subjects 

 whose connection with graft-hybridism is slender : and even here 

 the work of Marshall Ward on bridging species is unnoticed, though 

 this is one of the clearest cases in which the physiological con- 

 stitution of a parasite may be permanently altered by its sojourn 

 on a particular host. The main conclusion of the work is that, 

 though there is evidence of the transfer of certain organic sub- 

 stances through the fusion-surface (even of a "virus " in the case 

 of infectious variegation), yet there is no known instance in which 

 the hereditary tendencies of either graft-symbiont have been affected 

 by their association with the other : the changes often observed in 

 the scion being of the same nature as the production of habitat- 

 forms. Professor Winkler includes an account of some new ex- 

 periments of his own in which by certain devices one plant was 

 made holoparasitic upon another for long periods, but without 

 modification of its biotype. 



The forthcoming parts of Professor Winkler's book will doubt- 

 less present a less depressing record of inconclusive experiments, 

 lack of controls, and untrustworthy data generally ; for we are 

 promised an account of that aspect of the subject in which 

 Professor Winkler has been a pioneer and in which, thanks to 

 his efforts and those of Professor Baur and others, a body of facts 

 of striking novelty and importance has been acquired : namely, 

 the discoveries with regard to chimaeras and related phenomena, 

 which have solved many old problems and have given rise to new. 



E. H. C. 



BOOKNOTES, NEWS, dc. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on March 21st, Mr. 

 H. N. Dixon showed a series of plants from South Portugal, 

 stating that the plants shown were collected on a botanical visit 

 to Algarve in company with Mr. W. E. Nicholson in May, 1911. 

 The trip was mainly taken with a view to bryophytic study, and 

 the phanerogams were only incidentally collected. They were 



