Wanted. — Short notes of interest to the general botanist 

 are always in demand for this department. Our readers are 

 invited to make this the place of publication for their shorter 

 botanical items. The magazine is issued as soon as possible 

 after the 15th of February, May, August and November. 



Elementary Species of Linnaea. — The pretty little 

 plant named for the great Swedish botanist has now had its 

 turn at the hands of a persevering German who finds that our 

 single species may be resolved into no less than 140 elementary 

 species with several sub-forms. Linnaeus has been called "the 

 father of botany" but we are inclined to think that were he 

 alive he would be likely to decline to father such botany as 

 this. 



The Parasite of a Fungus. — Since the fungi are lack- 

 ing in chlorophyll, without which plants cannot make food 

 from the air and water, they are obliged to depend upon ready- 

 made food derived from other plants or animals. If the 

 fungus lives on dead and decaying matter it is called a sapro- 

 phyte, but if it attacks living things it is a parasite. Occas- 

 ionally certain speces of fungi show that there is not always 

 "honor among thieves" by preying upon one another. Thus 

 the mushroom Collybia dryophila, which lives upon dead wood, 

 is in turn obliged to support a smaller fungus known as Tre- 

 mella mycetophila. In the Ontario Natural Science Bulletin, 

 H. H. Whetzel recently recorded another case of this kind in 

 which Cephalothecium rosenm was found living on one of the 

 hard puff-balls. Scleroderma vidgare. The Cephalothecium 



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