AN interesting number of the Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (London: Dulau and Co.), has just appeared. In the first paper Mr. R. H. Lock gives the third instalment of his work on plant-sbreeding in the tropics, dealing with maize. Unlike some Mendelian experiments, the results have been obtained with large numbers, and on a total, for instance, of 111,697 seeds, the result was 50.17 against an expectation of 50.11. The second paper is by Mr. T. Petch, on the fungi of the nests of the common termites, or white ants, of Ceylon, a worthy successor of Möller's classical paper on the fungi of the leaf-cutting ants of South America. He has worked out in detail the entire life-histories of the fungi, and shows that while the regular “fungus is a Volvaria (already described elsewhere, as are so many of the tropical fungi that have only been worked at in Europe, under at least six genera), the garden also contains “weeds,” one of which, at least, a Xylaria, is impossible of eradication by the ants. incidentally, grave doubt is thrown on Möller's theory of selection of the fungus by the ants, for the “Kohl-rabi heads” occur in the termite nests in an even more perfect and complex form than in the leaf cutters nests, and yet the same form appears on an allied outside fungus not cultivated by the ants. The paper is well illustrated.