NOTES AND COMMENT . 



At the suggestion of one of our subscribers, and with the encourage- 

 ment of several other persons, The Plant World announces the 

 offering of two prizes for the best papers embodying original work in 

 soil physics. The first prize will be S50 and the second $25, with the 

 reservation of the right to withhold both prizes if no worthy papers 

 are submitted, or to combine the prizes for the rewarding of a paper 

 of exceptional merit. The conditions governing the aw r ard will be 

 similar to those employed in connection with the prizes for papers on 

 the water relations of plants, which were offered in April, 1915. The 

 names of the judges who will appraise the submitted papers w r ill be 

 announced in a later issue. The contesting contributions should be 

 in the hands of the Editor of The Plant World by December 1, 1916, 

 and the announcement of the award will be made not later than March 

 1, 1917. The early announcement of this contest is made in the hope 

 that an entire year will afford time for a vigorous competition. 



In the second Supplement to the Monthly Weather Review (Sep- 

 tember, 1915) Professor J. Warren Smith, of Columbus, has published an 

 extensive series of meteorological data and phenological observations 

 made at Wauseon, in Northwestern Ohio, between 1873 and 1912 by 

 Mr. Thomas Mikesell. The full records of daily minimum, mean and 

 maximum temperatures and of daily precipitation have been published. 

 The phenological data comprise observations on 16 kinds of wild and 

 garden fruits, on 20 crop plants, on 48 trees, shrubs and vines, and on 114 

 herbaceous plants. Professor Smith has already published a paper on 

 the effect of weather on the yield of corn (Monthly Weather Review, 

 February, 1914), based upon Mr. Mikesell's records, but he has done 

 nothing more in the present paper than to present all of the data in 

 a concise form. A record of such vouchsafed accuracy, of such long 

 duration, and covering nearly 200 species of plants, is of great value 

 as a source of material for investigating the relation of climatic factors 

 to plant activity. 



Another paper of phenological interest is published in the second 

 Supplement of the Weather Review by Mr. George N. Lamb, of the 



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