212 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



and the methods of treating people who have been poisoned. Scien- 

 tific estimation reckons the number of those at about 10,000 each 

 year, though only a comparatively small number of cases are fatal. 

 Gueguen also discusses the value of fungi as an article of food, by ex- 

 amining the composition of the various parts of a series of edible forms. 

 He concludes that fungi provide a complete food, and various experi- 

 menters have existed on them alone for several weeks. They are more 

 nutritions than most vegetables, and provide a food of the greatest 

 utility. An index of the whole volume is added. 



Microfungi in Cheese Curds.* — A. Wolff undertook the examina- 

 tion of milk that had failed to produce the necessary curds for cheese. 

 He found an Oidium and three forms of Cladosporiam. He cultivated 

 these fungi on gelatine plates, and gives an account of their growth 

 and development. Some other organisms were also found in the milk, 

 species of bacillus. 



Chemical Study of Fungus Cell-sap.f — C. Gerber has carried out 

 a series of experiments on the cell-sap of a number of the higher fungi, 

 to determine the curdling reactions of each. He expressed the juice of 

 young and fresh plants, and tested it with milk. The results are recorded 

 in tabular form. He found that, in this regard, the most active cells 

 were those in the neighbourhood of the hymenium in gilled species ; in 

 others, such as perennial Polyporese, the cells of the pileus were more 

 active. He tested also the effect of heat, and found the most susceptible 

 were those that grew in autumn, when there are no extremes of heat or 

 cold. The more resistant forms were those that grew in winter (Tricho- 

 loma nudum, etc.), and in their power of coagulation they approached 

 the higher plants. 



Ferments of Fungi.! — Priugsheim and Zempten have made press- 

 extracts of various fungi, and tested the fermentative power of the sub- 

 stance. In some cases the extract gave negative results, while the residue 

 was found capable of active fermentation, showing that the active 

 principle could not be separated from the body of the cell. In the case 

 of Aspergillus Wentii both extract and residue were active. Some of 

 the fungi were able to use as food disaccharides which they were unable 

 to ferment. 



Biological Experiments with Fungi. §— K. Kominami has attempted 

 to throw some light on the subject of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters by growiug generation after generation of filamentous fungi 

 in certain media. He took conidia of Aspergillus niger and grew them 

 in a normal solution : other conidia that had been grown in a salt solu- 

 tion ; and a third series that had been under the influence of salt solution 

 for ten generations. He found that when these conidia, produced under 

 different conditions, were sown on a highly concentrated salt medium, 

 the first failed to germinate, the second germinated fairly well, while 

 the third grew vigorously. Kominami could not carry the experiments 



* Centralbl. Bakt., xxiv. (1909) pp. 361-73 (3 pis.), 

 f Comptes Rendus, cxlix. (1909) pp. 944-7. 



% Hoppe-Seyler's Zeitschr. Physiol. Chemie, lxii. (1909) pp. 367-85. See also 

 Bot. Gaz., xlix. (1910) pp. 74-5. 



§ Journ. Coll. Sci. Tokyo, xxvii. 5 (1909) 33 pp. (3 pis.). 



