Glen Prosen Research Articles

Heritability and Parent Selection for Fruit Firmness in Red Raspberry1

Abstract Red raspberry (Rubus idaeus L.) fruit firmness, measured as compression force with a Hunter Series L portable pressure gauge, was determined from 15 parent clones and for 813 seedlings derived from 44 crosses. Heritability estimate for fruit firmness, based on parent/offspring regression, was .90 ± .13. Analysis of variance of progeny data showed that general combining ability variance (additive) was significant and much larger than specific combining ability variance. Of the parent clones, ‘Glen Isla’, ‘Glen Prosen’, SHRI6820/41, and SHRI6820/64 had the firmest fruit and, on the basis of progeny analysis, had the highest general combining ability parent values. Low parental values were obtained for ‘Sumner’, ‘Mailing Leo’, ‘Mailing Admiral’, ‘Taylor’, ‘Haida’, and ‘Meeker’.

British Bryological Society

Members of the British Bryological Society assembled at Kirriemuir, Angus, during September 3–10 for the annual general meeting and excursion. Under the leadership of Miss U. Duncan, excursions were made to the Sidlaw Hills, the Loch of Kinnordy, the Den of Airlie, Glen Clova and Barry Sands. Two days were devoted to the investigation of localities in Glen Clova; the first to Loch Brandy and the cliffs above, and the second day to the Fee Burn area. Small parties also went to Glen Isla and Glen Prosen. Many interesting bryophytes were studied, and the results of the field-work will be published in the next part of the Transactions of the Society. Mr. A. Thompson was elected president, with Dr. P. W. Richards as vice-president, for 1947–48. Mr. E. C. Wallace was elected honorary secretary.

Meltwater drainage channels and other glacial phenomena of the Highland Border Belt from Cortachy to the Bervie Water

T he marginal channels cut by meltwater during the retreat of the ‶Strathmore Ice″—that portion of the Second Ice-sheet of Northern Scotland which traversed Eastern Forfar, Kincardine, and Aberdeen—are very distinctive. All of them fall towards the north; and, quite independently of the characteristic red clays and erratics (Old Red Sandstone lavas and sediments), prove that the ice retreated from north to south, and advanced from south to north. These channels, however, do not mark the furthest inland extension of the Strathmore Ice, since they could be cut only on ground left free of ice by the shrinkage, either of the ice from the interior of the country that joined the coastwise current, or of the coastwise current itself, or by the shrinkage of both. Study of the ground along the Highland border from Cortachy to the Bervie Water shows that the Strathmore Ice everywhere transgressed the boundary fault. Marginal channels seam the schist country up to a mile or a little more north of the fault; but characteristic boulder clay from Strathmore has been found in the valleys of the Bervie Water and North Esk one and a half miles, and on the West Water fully two miles north of the boundary fault; while characteristic erratics occur in Glen Clova nearly four miles, and in Glen Prosen at least two miles, north of the margin of the Old Red Sandstone. This transgression was noted for Forfarshire, without mention of precise localities or extent, by Professor Geikie in ‶The Intercrossing of Erratics in Glacial Deposits″ ( Scottish Naturalist , 1881; ‶Fragments of Earth Lore,″ 1893, pp. 196-199). The carry of erratics and boulder clay was in all probability not ‶from the east and south-east″ as Professor Geikie states, but from the south-south-west and south: moreover they penetrate furthest into the Highland area where the schist escarpment is breached by the largest streams. The Third Ice-sheet, which did not envelop the whole north-east of Scotland, also left characteristic ground moraine and erratics, as well as overflow channels, marginal and direct. The relations of the Second and Third Ice-sheets, particularly the extent to which the latter overlapped the area previously occupied by the Strathmore Ice, may be determined by a study of the deposits and channels belonging to each. From such a study it is clear that in the area discussed the Third Ice-sheet did not in general extend quite as far as the boundary fault, just reached it on the West Water, passed almost a mile beyond it on the Bervie Water, transgressed it for fully a mile and over a considerable area on the North Esk, and for a distance as yet uncertain on the South Esk and Prosen.