812 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTJ CULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Helicophyllum Alberti. By N. E. Brown (Gard. Chron. No. 931, 

 p. 304, Supp. fig. ; Oct. 29, 1904). — This remarkable and quaint 

 Aroid is a native of Bokhara : it was introduced into cultivation at 

 St. Petersburg in 1883; the next year it was sent to Kew, where it 

 flowered in 1887. The spathe is of a rich blackish-purple, with a long 

 protruding appendix of the same colour. The flower is sessile among the 

 leaves. The genus Helicophyllum only differs from Arum in some 

 minor particulars. — G. S. S. 



Heredity in Bean Hybrids. By R. A. Emerson (nth Ann. Bep. 

 Agric. Expt. St. Nebraska, U.S.A., 1904, pp. 33-68).— A valuable 

 report of a series of experiments carried out with various races of Dwarf 

 and Runner Beans (Phascolns vulgaris). In these experiments Professor 

 Emerson has determined the following nine pairs of unit-characters, all 

 of which clearly follow, in their heredity, the Mendelian type Pisum 

 as regards dominance, segregation, and gametic purity : — Axial and 

 terminal pods ; stringless and stringy pods ; tender and tough pods ; 

 green and yellow pods ; blue-green and yellow pods ; blue- green and 

 green pods, stems, and leaves ; coloured and white flowers ; coloured and 

 white seeds ; and brown and yellow seeds. When the above unit- 

 characters were crossed in the first generation the first-named of the pair 

 was dominant over the second, which was recessive. When the hybrid 

 dominants were self-fertilised in the second generation segregation took 

 place in the proportion of about three dominants to one recessive. In the 

 third generation the extracted recessives all bred true, while the dominants 

 proved to be of two kinds, pure and hybrid, in about Mendelian pro- 

 portions, thus demonstrating the fact of gametic purity. One interesting 

 result obtained by Professor Emerson is worthy of special notice. White 

 x Black seeds gave in the first generation mottled black and grey seeds. 

 In the second generation these hybrid mottled seeds gave rise to three 

 types : individuals bearing black seeds, individuals bearing white seeds, 

 and individuals bearing mottled seeds. In the third generation the white 

 seeds bred true ; the black seeds proved to be of two kinds, pure blacks 

 which bred true, and hybrid blacks containing white ; the mottled seeds 

 so far appear to be of three kinds, pure mottled, hybrid mottled containing 

 black, and hybrid mottled containing black and white. The numbers are 

 not sufficient to draw definite conclusions, but the qualitative results seem 

 to suggest that there may be two pairs of unit-characters concerned here, 

 viz. coloured and white seeds, and mottled and self-coloured seeds, and 

 that the mottled character may possibly have been introduced by the 

 original white parent, being carried by it in a latent state in all albino 

 matings only to become patent when mated with a coloured form, much 

 in the same way that the Dutch-markings character was found to have 

 been introduced by an albino angora in the reviewer's recent experiments 

 with rabbits. 



It may be also interesting to note that in a few of Professor Emerson's 

 experiments, dominance in the first generation was not always complete ; 

 e.g. in stringless x stringy pods there were some hybrids truly inter- 

 mediate. In the second generation these segregated into three forms : 

 stringless, intermediate, and stringy. In the third generation the inter- 



