1885.] OBITUARY. 267 



Obituary. 



iPu FRANKLIN B. HOUGH, our frefiuent and valued con- 

 tributor, appeared a remarkably healthy man ; while more 

 than seventy publications to wliich his name is attached, on botany, 

 forestry, topography, law, and statistics, are the sufficient monument 

 of his literary labours ; yet his first illness was his last. An attack 

 of pneumonia seized him while in Albany watching over the pro- 

 gress of the New York State Forestry Bill, the successful inception 

 of which resulted as the fruit of liis labours. He was able to throw 

 off this sufficiently to return to Lowville, long his village home ; a 

 complication of maladies attacked his system, and he died there on 

 the 11th June last, in the 63rd year of his age. 



Though educated as a physician. Dr. Franklin Hough never 

 entered into active practice for any lengthened period. So early as 

 1847 he published a catalogue of plants of Lewis county, which 

 was the forerunner of an extensive series of researches in forestry, 

 meteorology, and the collection of statistics. He was superintendent 

 of the New York State Census in 1855, and again in 1865. But 

 his fame will mainly rest on his report on the methods of the 

 German and other Continental Forestry Schools, visited by Dr. Hough 

 in accordance with a special Act of Congress when chief of the 

 Forestry Division of the Bureau of Agriculture. And we only add 

 that in the last issued report of this Department, there are no fewer 

 than five separate papers by Dr. Hough, on subjects varying from 

 the woods best suited for railway ties, to the cultivation of the 

 maple for its sugar in North America. 



FuxGOiD Disease. — At the July meeting of the scientific com- 

 mittee of the Royal Horticultm^al Society of London, a communi- 

 cation from Wellington, New Zealand, was read, regarding the 

 destruction of fruit trees by the mycelium of a ground fungus. The 

 effects extend in a most singular fashion, travelling half-way across 

 a garden or orchard from one side only, at others extending in all 

 directions. The affection shows itself first at the junctui'e of the 

 root and stem. The bark becomes absolutely rotten w^hen per- 

 meated by the mycelium, and emits a nauseous odour. Plum trees 

 usually show but little mycelium as compared with apples, but the 

 trunk is more obviously affected, and exudes gum freely. 



