BOTANY. 315 



ing plants of the same variety, his conclusion being that the crossing is 

 highly favorable. 



DISEASES OF PLANTS. 



The cofifee-leaf disease produced by Hcmileia rastatrix is described 

 and illustrated in an article by 1*. Abbay in the Journ. Linn. Soc. In 

 FiuKji l*omicoli, Von Thueinen gives a summary of the fungi which at- 

 tack the common fruit trees. A disease attacking seedling beech plants; 

 supposed to be caused by Pliytophthora Fagi, and the distortions of spru- 

 ces produced by Xectrla cucurh'UuIa are described by Hartig in the Forst- 

 wiss. Ceutralblatt. lieinke and Berihold describe the manner in 

 which potatoes are decomposed by the action of fungi in the proceedings 

 of the botanical laboratory in Gottingen, and Thonjas describes a large 

 number of galls produced in plants by ditt'ereut insects, in the Zeitschrift 

 tiir die gesammten Naturwissenschaften. A general treatise on Diseases 

 of cultivated plants produced by Fungi by Winter has appeared from 

 the press of Scholze, in Leipsic. The appearance in France of the onion 

 smut, Urocystis Cepulw, well known in some i^arts of the United States, 

 has been recorded by Cornu, and the same botanist i^ublished several 

 communications on the disease of the vine known as authracose, or, as it 

 is frequently called, anthrachnose. Piauchon and Cornu do not agree 

 with regard to the fungus producing the disease in question, the former 

 thinking the fungus to be Sphaceloma ampelimim De Bary, and the 

 latter, Phoma uvicola Berk, and Curt. Under the title of Ampelottiiccti 

 Italici, Spegazzini has continued his account of the fungi attacking 

 grapes in the Rivista della viticultura. In Die Poclen des Weinstockes 

 Ton Thuemen gives his observations on Gleosporium ampelophagum, a 

 fungus which attacks grapes. 



THALLOPHYTES. 



Alga;. — Of papers relating to the algiP- of the United States but 

 little can be said. The Bull. Torrey Club contains some new fresh-water 

 species by Wolle, and the Am. Naturalist contains a preliminary report 

 by Farlow on algai collected by Prof. A. S. Packard in the Great Salt 

 Lake. Nor haye works on algne in foreign countries been as numerous 

 as usual. The second part of Cohn's Kryptogamen Flora von Schlesieu 

 contains the algie elaborated by Kirchner, and the Nuovo Giorn. Bot. 

 Ital. contains a paper by Borzi on the Morplwlogy and Biology of the 

 Phycochromacecv. Kjellman, in a short paper, illustrated by a chart, 

 gives an account of the distribution of algJB by regions on the Skager- 

 Rack. Prof. E. P. Wright has two illustrated papers in the Transac- 

 tions of the Eoyal Irish Academy : On the cell structure of Griffithsia 

 setacea and on the development of its antheridia and tetrasporcs, and On 

 the so-called Siphons and on the development of the tetraspores in Poly- 

 siphonia. The Trans. Linn. Soc. contains an account, by D. D. Cunning- 

 ham, of a curious new genus, the single species of which, Mycoidea 



