CCxiv GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



the fruit open it is found to be hollow. The disease is not 

 uncommon in Germany, and has been reported in New Bruns- 

 wick. The fungus is closely related to Ascomyces defor- 

 mans, which attacks peach leaves, making them curl up. 



Diseases of Forest Trees. In the Wichtige Krankheiten 

 der Waldbdume Hartig gives an interesting account of some 

 of the diseases of European forest trees. He mentions, among 

 other fungi injurious to coniferous trees, Agaricus melleits, 

 and considers that the sclerotium form known as P/tizo- 

 morpha subcorticalis is nothing but a state of the myceli- 

 um of this species. It is curious to note how very large a 

 proportion of fungi, recognized as injurious to forest trees, 

 attack species of Coniferae. According to the views of Har- 

 tig, not only are the different members of the order Uredi- 

 neae, as ^Ecidium Pini, Pers., Cceoma pinitorquum, A. Br., 

 Cceoma Laricis, R. H'rtg., found injurious to coniferous trees, 

 but also members of the orders Hymenomycetes and Asco- 

 mycetes. Of the former order, Agaricus melleus, L. Trame- 

 tes Pini, Fr., and Trametes raciperda, R. EPrtg., are particu- 

 larly mentioned as injurious to Coniferae; but the former 

 species, at least, also attacks other kinds of trees as well. Of 

 the Ascomycetes attacking Coniferse, Peziza Wittkommii, R. 

 H'rtg., is peculiar to the larch. 



Club-foot in Turnips. Farmers have long been familiar 

 with a diseased form of turnip-roots in which they swell up 

 and become very crooked and ill-shaped. This was supposed 

 to be caused by the attacks of some insect, and, in fact, such 

 roots when harvested are almost always found to be covered 

 with insects. M. Woronin, of St. Petersburg, near which city 

 the disease has just made its appearance, has investigated 

 the subject, and comes to the conclusion that the trouble is 

 caused by some vegetable organism, hitherto unknown, re- 

 sembling in some respects the Myxomycetes, in others the 

 Chytridinese. 



Growth of the Vegetable Cell. Dr. Moritz Traube, at the 

 meeting of German physicians and naturalists at Breslau, 

 gave some account of experiments with artificial cells. When 

 two colloid substances, which give precipitates with one an- 

 other, are brought together in solution in such a way that a 

 drop of one is introduced into a mass of the other, a pelli- 

 cle is formed around the drop. Traube made use of a sola- 



