476 Scientific Intelligence. 



will have a larger content of sugar and at the same time possess 

 good powers of resistance to untoward influences. It is interest- 

 ing to note that " Sereh " is not noted at the Station or on the 

 Estate. Since it is the policj'' of the Station to place at the ser- 

 vice of the Cubans the results of these experiments, improved 

 varieties will be described at an early daj r . 



Plants of various species which were brought by Mr. C. G. 

 Pringle from Mexico direct to Cuba a few years ago and set out 

 at once in the grounds of the Station, have done well with the 

 exception of a few which were destroyed in a freshet which 

 injured a part of our grounds. Most of them are now well 

 established as stocks for experimental purposes. 



During the past winter, Mr. Robert Cameron, Head Gardener 

 of the Garden at Cambridge, made a long journe}' in the West 

 Indies to secure certain fresh specimens of desirable economic 

 plants for the Cuban Station. These have reached the grounds 

 in good condition, and are nearly ready for crossing. To meet 

 the demands for a wider range of soil for these new plants, addi- 

 tions have lately been made to the land used for study, and it is 

 alread}^ found that our range of plants can now be materially 

 increased. We have about all the sorts of soil and the kinds of 

 exposure needed for our purposes. G. l. g. 



19. Plant Pesj)0)ise as a means of Physiological Investiga- 

 tion • by Jagadis Chunder Bose, M.A., D.Sc, Professor, Presi- 

 dency College, Calcutta (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 

 New York, and Bombay, 1906). — This volume of more than 700 

 pages is a direct outgrowth of a previous work by the same 

 author, entitled, " Response in the Living and 1SI on-living," pub- 

 lished in 1902. The first nine chapters in the earlier treatise 

 were devoted to electric response, and response in plants, while 

 the remainder of the work was given up to a consideration of 

 response in inorganic matters. A great deal of that work was 

 so interesting that it almost compelled a continuance of investi- 

 gation along the same lines. 



In the present volume the author attempts to prove by the use 

 of extremely delicate multiplying apparatus, by which slight 

 movements are increased many fold, that even those parts of liv- 

 ing plants which have not hitherto been seen in motion possess 

 a considerable power of response to external stimulation. The 

 types of multipliers are for the most part unlike those previously 

 employed in vegetable physiology, and, therefore, the paths 

 struck out by the investigator are generally new. Whether the 

 paths lead directly to the conclusions which the author adopts, 

 must remain an open question until his researches have been 

 many times repeated by others. But it may be unhesitatingly 

 said that a careful reader of the present volume must be 

 impressed by the ingenuity of device and the delicacy of mani- 

 pulation obvious throughout the whole of the experimenting, 

 and, further, one is struck by the apparent truthfulness of all 

 the records. Assuming that the instruments work exactly as 



