No. 386.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. I7I 
Bailey’s Evolution of our Native Fruits.'— Though Professor 
Bailey is a horticulturist and commonly writes for horticulturists, he 
is well known to botanists as an accomplished botanist. To say that 
the nine chapters comprised in the present book are devoted to the 
rise of the American grape, the strange history of the mulberries, the 
evolution of American plums and cherries, the native apples, the origin 
of American raspberty-growing, evolution of blackberry and dewberry 
culture, various types of berry-like fruits, various types of tree fruits, 
and general remarks on the improvement of our native fruits, tells 
little of the wealth of detail that it contains. Group after group is 
monographed, and people in search of disentangled snarls of nomen- 
clatural detail need seek little further than the present work for 
models of conservative upheaval when upheaval becomes necessary. 
- As to the horticultural side of the book, little need be said: it was 
written for horticulturists. T. 
Poisonous Grains.— It has long been believed that the fruit of 
Lolium temulentum is poisonous, and chemists have had something 
to say about its toxic principles. In the Journal de Botanique for 
August, M. Guérin publishes an article embodying the results of a 
study made at the École supérieure de pharmacie of Paris, in which 
he records the constant occurrence of fungal hyphæ in the nucellus 
of the ovule and the layer of the caryopsis lying between the aleurone 
layer and the hyaline portion of the wall. These hyphæ, which ap- 
pear not to have been identified with any fruiting form, are referred 
to as, perhaps, the cause of the toxicity of the Loliums in which they 
occur (Z. temulentum, L. arvense, and L. linicola), and they are stated 
not to have been found in Z. /ta/icum, and only once in L. perenne. 
The fungus is compared with Ændoconidium temulentum, Pril. & 
Delacr., found in diseased grain of the rye, and believed to be the ` 
cause of some of the cases of poisoning attributed to that grain, 
though it is believed to differ from the fungus named, and the con- 
clusion is reached that, unlike this species and Claviceps, it lives in 
the maturing grain symbiotically rather than as a parasite. 
Botanical Notes. — The issue of Möllers Deutsche Gartner-Zeitung 
of October 22 may be called a Clematis number. It is well illustrated 
and contains a number of articles on the cultivated forms of this 
attractive genus by well-known writers. 
1 Bailey, L, H. Sketch of the Evolution of our Native Fruits. New York, The 
Macmillan Company, 1898. 8vo, xiii + 472 pp» 125 ff. 
