524 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Death of Director Wilfarth. — Hermann Wilfarth, director of the agricultural experi- 

 ment station at Bernburg, Germany, died November 27,1904. He was for many 

 years assistant to Prof. H. Hellriegel at the Bernburg Station, and was associated 

 with him in the classic investigations on the nitrogen feeding of Graminese and 

 Leguminosse, published in November, 1888, in which the assimilation of the free ni- 

 trogen of the air by leguminous plants in symbiosis with root tubercle bacteria was 

 first clearly demonstrated and explained. He was also associated with Hellriegel in 

 the development of his system of sand-culture experiments, and had charge of many 

 of the details of the experiments. Upon the death of Hellriegel, in 1895, he succeeds! 

 him as director of the station, and has continued the study of the fertilizer require- 

 ments of plants in pot cultures. He was born in Hamburg May 21, 1853. 



Prof. Selim Lemstrom. — The issue of Nature for December 8 contains an obituary 

 note upon Prof. Karl Selim Lemstrom, of Finland, the widely known physicist and 

 meteorologist, whose death occurred October 2. Professor Lemstrom 's name is a 

 familiar one to the readers of this journal, where his work of agricultural interest 

 has been frequently noted. He made an interesting study of night frosts and the 

 means of preventing their devastations by artificial clouds of smoke, for the produc- 

 tion of which he devised torches or tubes of peat. His w T ork on this subject was 

 extended by other investigators to several countries. He also made important exper- 

 iments on the influence of electricity on plant growth, and several of his papers 

 upon that subject have been abstracted in the Record. 



Miscellaneous. — A note in Nature states that in the sale of Chartley Park, Stafford- 

 shire, the remnant of the celebrated herd of white cattle which have been kept on 

 this estate for the last 700 years, did not go with the park, and will consequently 

 come under a separate ownership. Much regret is expressed at this, and it is hoped 

 that they will be given a safe home by their new owner where they will flourish and 

 increase. The herd is believed to be reduced to 9 head, and it is pointed out that 

 the capture of these by the new owner will be no easy task. In commenting upon 

 the herds of wild cattle in various British parks, it is stated that these were long con- 

 sidered to be direct descendants of the wild aurochs, but "it is now generally 

 admitted (largely owing to the writings of Mr. Lydekker) that they are derived 

 from domesticated albino breeds nearly allied to the Pembroke and other black 

 Welsh strains, some of which show a marked tendency to albinism. This view T , as 

 pointed out by a writer in the Times of November 29, is strongly supported by the 

 fact that the Chartley cattle frequently produce black calves. The theory advocated 

 by a later writer in the same journal that the British park cattle are the descendants 

 of a white sacrificial breed introduced by the Romans rests upon no solid basis." 



A yearbook of plant diseases has been established in Russia under the Imperial 

 Botanical Garden. This is based largely on the correspondence which comes to the 

 garden, and the reports of a large number of voluntary observers who send in sam- 

 ples of the diseased material and information concerning the distribution of the 

 disease. The yearbook for 1903, which has been issued, contains descriptions of 

 these diseases, the extent of their ravages, and means of combating them. The 

 work is directly under the charge of the Central Phytopathological Station. 



Prof. Willet M. Hays, of the Minnesota College and Station, entered upon his 

 duties as Assistant Secretary of this Department with the beginning of the new year. 

 He has been granted leave of absence by the Minnesota institution. 



E. H. Webster, a graduate of the Kansas Agricultural College, and for a time an 

 assistant in dairying in that institution, has been appointed chief of the Dairy Divi- 

 sion in this Department, Mr. Webster was formerly connected with the Division as 

 dairy inspector. 



Dr. F. Nobbe, professor of botany and plant physiology in the Forest Academy at 

 Tharand, Germany, has retired. 



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