324 BOTANY. 



DISEASES OF PLANTS. 



Duriug tlie year numerous notices have appeared in regard to the 

 spread of the American vine mildew, Perotwspora viticola, to the vine- 

 yards of Europe, where it is said to be causing great harm, especially in 

 Italy. The fungus has been found in several parts of France, Switzer- 

 land, Germany as far east as Austria, and in Italy. Eathay has de- 

 scribed a deformity of cherry trees i^roduced by Exoascus Wiesneri. 

 Hartig has published a number of papers on injurious fungi in a j)eri- 

 odical called Untersuchungen aus dem Forstbotanischen Institute the princi- 

 pal of which are Rosellinia quercina, which attacks the roots of oaks j 

 Phytophthora Fagi, which attacks seedling beeches ; Peziza WiWcommii, 

 which causes a distortion of the larch 5 and Nectria Cucurbitula, which 

 attacks the bark of spruces. The coffee-leaf disease, Ilemileia vastatrix, 

 has been studied by D. Morris, and a preliminary rci)ort on the same 

 subject has been made by H. M. Ward, who was sent by the British 

 Government to Ceylon to investigate the subject. Die Blasenrost Pilze 

 der Coulferen, a monograph of the genus Peridermium, by V^on Thiimen, 

 contains an account of the aecidial forms attacking Coni/enc, and 

 includes a number of species found in the United States. 



THAXLOPHYTES. 



Algw. — New American species of algje have been described in the 

 Bull. Torrey club by Wolle. In the first annual Kep't. Mass. State Board 

 of Health, Charity, and Lunacy is a paper by W. G. Farlow on Some Im- 

 ptirities of BrinJcing- Water, witli two plates, illustrating the common 

 species which produce the disagreeable odor sometimes found in the 

 water supplies of Boston. 



The most important work on algte which has api)eared during the 

 year is Florideernes MorpJiologi by Agardh. This is a large quarto with 

 33 colored plates, and was originally presented at the Swedish Eoyal 

 Academy of Science in ^877, and bears the dat« of publication 1S7D, but 

 was not received in this country until 1880. The work is in Swedish, 

 and embodies the author's views with regard to the structure of the 

 frond and fruit of the red-seaweeds. The text has been translated into 

 a Latin form, and under the title of Morphologia Floridearum has been 

 issued as an octavo with plates forming part iii of the third voluuie of 

 the Species Genera et Ordines Algarum. Areschoug, in the But. iS^otiser, 

 founds a new genus Oxygloamim on Laminaria japonica, a si)ecies for- 

 merly included in L. saccharina. Kjellman, in Bot. Tidsk, gives an ac- 

 count of Icelandic algne, and remarks that the alga flora of Iceland more 

 closely resembles that of jSTorthern Scandinavia than that of Spitzber- 

 gen and Greenland. Kuntze, in Engler's Jahrbiicher, and also in Nature, 

 gives some observations on the distribution of the gulf-weed, and ex- 

 presses doubts as to the existence of a genuine sargasso-sea, as de- 

 scribed by Huuiboldi and others. He also gives a revision of the ge- 



