CO129-554-6 Hong Kong University- 1. Appointment of Dr. Chen Shas Yi as head of Chinese Department... 18-3-1935 - 28-10-1935 — Page 18

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A. H. CROOK

of preparation the germ is lost but she does mention a fact about the rice spikelet which may possibly have something to do with this. "The spikelet of rice (Oryza sativa, L.)", she says, "shows the unusual feature that the lodicules are joined to the margins of the palea, at its base, so that they look deceptively as if they were related to it as stipules."

In Leerzia oryzoides, a close ally of Oryza, mechanical pressure has caused an interlocking of the lemma and palea so that cleistogamy takes place. But Mrs. Arber does not mention whether any of the near allies of rice lose their germ as readily as rice seems to do.

We should have liked a lengthier discussion on the antiquity and possible birthplace of the sugar-cane-"the only important perennial grass grown for human food." "It is selected for sterility, since the store of sugar in the stem would be exhausted by the act of flowering." So this is the reason that the plant never flowers. Many a time in South China and Formosa I have asked the Chinese farmer for the flower and fruit of the sugar-cane and he always replied that it had none. Mr. Silvens in his "Texas Grasses" also notes, "rarely blooms in the United States." "There are indications that the cultivation of the sugar-cane began very early in India" but we are not given any precise idea of what this 'very early' means. Mrs. Arber does not refer to the two passages in the Old Testament where the sugar-cane is mentioned-Isaiah XLIII, v. 24, "Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices"; and Jeremiah VI, v. 20 "to what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba and the sweet cane from a far country?" So evidently the Hebrews of 600 or 700 B.C. were familiar with the sugar-cane as a domestic plant, though like spices it was an import 'from a far country'. Alphonse de Candolle, in "The Origin of Cultivated Plants" (p. 159). says, "On the other hand the Hebrew writings do not mention sugar". But Alphonse de Candolle was a Frenchman, and the French are almost pro- verbially ignorant of the Bible. Not so, however, Mrs. Arber.

When we come to the résumé of our knowledge of the bamboos and the origin of the tree-habit as exemplified by them we reach some of the most interesting part of the book. Like the shady Bishop,“our interest's on the dangerous edge of things", though perhaps 'the dangerous edge' is not quite the same for the Bishop and for us. But readers of some of these fascinating chapters must feel that Mrs. Arber has an interest in the dangerous edge of things too, but inspired and tempered by her unique scholarship and academic restraint. When the man in the street thinks about the development of plants at all he seems generally to conclude that the herbaceous forms appeared first, and that some of these, strengthening and lignifying their vascular tissues, grew into shrubs and trees. Botanists, on the other hand, were inclined to reverse this order: they generally held that the herbaceous forms were later than the woody forms; the herbaceous and annual grasses would thus be the later and more modern arrivals. This view seemed to be rather supported from an examination of the flower. Thus the flower of the bamboos conformed more closely to what was accepted as the original typical monocotyledonous type. Mrs. Arber, however, questions this theory, and substitutes for it the

The Hong Kong Naturalist.