No. 525] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



573 



unusually clear way and is free from unnecessary technicalities ; 

 in fact the treatment may be said to be popular in the best sense 

 of the word. This perhaps is the reason the book has been set 

 in Gothic instead of Woman type, a fact which will appeal to the 

 average German reader, though perhaps not to those outside 

 Germany. The material is thoroughly modern without, how- 

 ever, involving the reader in present-day disputed questions, and 

 in some respects the volume may be looked upon as a rewriting of 

 the ground covered by Bergmann and Leuckart's •• Anatomisch- 

 physiologisch Uebersicht des Tierreiches. " To this work the 

 author acknowledges much indebtedness and appropriately dedi- 

 cates his volume to its authors. In the revival of interest in 

 the study of form and function Professor Hesse's volume should 

 find its place on the book shelf of every zoologist. 



G. H. Parker. 



PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 1 



Dr. Kauffman lias published a very interesting paper on the 

 influence of various substances on the sexual and other charac- 

 ters of certain species of Saprolegniaceae. Thorough studies 

 of this kind are likely to add much to our knowledge of the biol- 

 ogy of the fungi and will eventually, no doubt, furnish a mass 

 of data which may be of material aid in the solution of some of 

 the fundamental problems of evolution and variation. 



One notable advance made by the author is the use of pure 

 cultures obtained from single zoospores. A very successful and 

 apparently simple method of obtaining the single spore cultures 

 is described. It consists in making dilutions of zoospores in 

 sterile water and sprinkling them with a pipette on the surface 

 of a gelatine plate where they can be located with the microscope, 

 and when they have germinated, they may be transferred to 

 other plates or tubes. 



The author does not state how many generations of each or- 

 ganism were grown from the same original single zoospore cul- 

 ture under the same conditions. We infer from his account, 

 however, that in most cases the transfers were made from por- 

 tions of the mycelium or gemma' and were in the nature of vege- 

 tative reproductions rather than new generations. 



'"A Contribution to the Physiology of the Saprolegniacea\ with Special 

 Reference to the Variation of the Sexual Organs," C. H. Kauffman (Annals 

 of Botany, No. 87, Vol. 22, p. 361, July, 190S). 



