204 The American Naturalist. [March, 



The Corundum Deposits of Georgia. 2 — This preliminary re- 

 port on the corundum deposits of Georgia, by Francis P. King, has 

 been issued as Bulletin No. 2 by the Geol. Survey of that State. The 

 importance of corundum in the arts, and the high price paid for it, 

 together with the fact that Georgia ranks second in the "Union in the 

 production of this mineral, make the report of special interest. The 

 introductory chapters give the history, varieties and associate minerals 

 of corundum, succeeded by a brief account of the geology of the crys- 

 talline belt in which the mineral occurs and the distribution of depos- 

 its. Several pages are given to the economics, including natural and 

 artificial abrasives. There is also a bibliography of the American 

 literature upon the subject. 



The map accompanying the report is well-colored, showing at a 

 glance the different formations. The other illustrations are reproduc- 

 tions from photographs, showing out-crops of the mineral bearing veins. 



Bailey's Plant Breeding. 5 — No man in the country, perhaps, is 

 better prepared to write a book on plant breeding than the accom- 

 plished professor of horticulture in Cornell University, and it is a 

 pleasure to find that in the preparation of the work before us he has 

 not disappointed his friends. There is, as the author says in his pre- 

 face, much misapprehension and imperfect knowledge as to the origin- 

 ation of new forms of plants, and much of what has been written on 

 the subject is misleading. " Horticulturists commonly look upon each 

 novelty as an isolated fact, whilst we ought to regard each one as but 

 an expression of some law of the variation of plants." The author 

 might have included in the foregoing many "botanists" as well as the 

 horticulturists, for, unfortunately, it is true that many who call them- 

 selves botanists, and who hold positions in honored institutions, have 

 not yet risen to a biological conception of the science which they pro- 

 fess to cultivate. 



Among the topics treated in these lectures are the following, viz. : 

 individuality, fortuitous variation, sex as a factor in the variation of 

 plants, physical environment and variation, struggle for life, division 

 of labor, crossing, etc. 



The book should be in every botanist's library, and every teacher of 

 botany will do well to make copious extracts from it in his lectures. 



1 A Preliminary Eeport on the Corundum Deposits of Georgia. By Francis P. 

 King, Bull. No. 2, Georgia Geological Survey, Atlanta, 1894. 



s Plant Breeding, being five lectures upon the Amelioration of Domestic Plants. 

 By L. H. Bailey. New York : Macmillan & Co., 1895. pp. xii, 293, 12 mo. 



