14 The Ottawa Naturalist. [April 



sumer has to pay from $15 to $18 a ton for them. Such screen- 

 ings frequently contain seeds injurious to the health of animals, 

 but it has been found that sheep are able to eat them without 

 any apparent injury, and indeed thousands of sheep are fattened 

 on such screenings every year. The feeding value of such 

 screenings depends largely upon the character of the fodder 

 grains found in them. For example a composite sample of 

 wheat screenings was found to give the following analysis: 

 20 per cent, wheat and barley; 12 per cent, oats and wild 

 oats; 30 per cent, buckwheat screenings; 12 per cent, lamb's 

 quarters; 3 per cent, tumbling mustard; 2 per cent, other 

 mustards; 2 per cent, other weed seeds; 19 per cent, chaff, etc. 



It was explained how, that on account of this gigantic 

 waste the present system of grain inspection has been evolved. 

 All grain, practically, coming to Fort William, is docked. The 

 average dockage in wheat is 2\ per cent., and on flax is 5 per 

 cent, to 7 per cent. As a rule the elevator companies get what- 

 ever revenue comes from the sale of all screenings. The total 

 dockage for 1911-12 was as follows:- wheat, 23,000 tons; 

 flax, 14,000 tons; oats, 1,500 tons; barley, 750 tons. 



In conclusion Mr. Dymond pointed out the importance of 

 doing two things: (1) To provide some means whereby grain 

 screenings could be devitalized on a commercial basis, and (2) 

 to take out such seeds as are injurious to stock, and to dispose 

 of the saleable part to Canadian stock men rather than to 

 Americans. 



In discussing fungi, Mr. Eastham first reviewed some general 

 characteristics of the class, such as absence of chlorophyll, 

 parasitism and saprophytism. He referred to the injurious 

 nature of parasitic fungi in causing many diseases in plants and 

 to the equally beneficial nature of saprophytic fungi in reducing 

 fallen leaves, trees and other organic debris to simpler materials 

 which at once become the food of growing plants again. He 

 stated that there was no hard and fast line separating sapro- 

 phytic from parasitic fungi, as for example, when a certain species 

 of parasitic fungus had worked the destruction of a living tree 

 it might still continue to exist upon the wood of the dead tree 

 (saprophytic). He pointed out that the part that one sees 

 above the substratum on which it grows is but the fruiting 

 body, whereas the part which actually destroys the wood, viz., 

 the mycelium, is buried out of sight and is found penetrating 

 the fibres of the wood sometimes for several feet from the point 

 where the external fruiting body is located. He traced the 

 evolution in the structure of the fruiting body from the simplest 

 of freely exposed plate-like discs to the more complex gill-bearing 

 and tube-forming species. In this connection it was also noted 



