488 RECORD OF SCIENCE FOR 1887 AND 1888. 



remedial measures can be employed against them. It is only by care- 

 fully studying their life history that methods of i)revention or cure (^an 

 be suggested. Various governments, but especially those of France 

 and the United States, have undertaken systematic investigations of 

 the life history of the injurious forms. Prof. P. Viala, as the represent- 

 ative of French interests, has visited this country and studied the 

 wild grapes and the various fungi found affecting them. 



The section of vegetable pathology of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture, Under Prof. F. Lamson Scribner, has accomplished valuable 

 work in this direction. His report (Ann. Rep. Dept. Ag., 1887), which 

 embraces about seventy-live pages, is illustrated by seventeen plates, 

 and deals with the diseases of the vine, the potato blight and rot, straw- 

 berry-leaf blight, apple scab, rust of beets, leaf rust of cherry, plum, 

 l)each, etc., cotton-leaf blight, anthracnose of the raspberry and black- 

 berry, smut of Indian corn, corn rust, etc. The Department has also 

 issued a Bulletin (No. 5) containing a report on experiments made in 

 1887 on the treatment of the downy mildew and black rot of the grape- 

 vine. In a former Bulletin (Xo. 2) the life history of these highly de- 

 structive parasites had been treated, and in this, the best method for 

 controlling them are described and discussed. 



" Les Maladies de la Vigne" is the title of a large work by Professor 

 Viala. A long list of species is enumerated, among which one hundred 

 and fifty species are regarded as accidental, one hundred as saprophytic, 

 and twenty-five as parasitic. The larger portion of the work is devoted 

 to a few well-known destructive forms, such as Peronospora viticola, 

 Oidhmi Tnclteri., etc. " Le Black Rot et le Couiotherium diplodiella" 

 is a well-written pamphlet of eighty pages by Viala and Ravaz. M. 

 Priellieux (Compt. Rend., cv) has an article on the grape disease 

 [Conotherimn dijylodiella). He concludes that it is a true x^arasite. 

 Gasperini (Atti Tosc. Soc. Sci. Nat.tViii) describes a new disease of 

 lemons, a species of Aspergillus. Vuillemin (Morot's Journ. Bot., i) 

 writes of the ''Disease affecting cherry and plum trees." The disease 

 of tomatoes {Dacfylium roscum, var.,) is described by W. G. Smith in 

 Gard. Chron., August, 1887. "A new fungus disease of the vine" is 

 characterized by Scribner and Viala in Agricult. Sci., September, 1887. 

 The species is uamed Greeneria fulginea, and is both saprophytic and 

 parasitic. It is reported to be very destructive to fruit in some parts 

 of North Carolina. " The curl of peach leaves" is described by Knowles 

 in Bot. Gaz., xii. 



LICHENS. 



The much-needed help to the study of the North American Lichens has 

 been furnished by Willey's "Introduction." Although a pamphlet of 

 only fifty-eight pages, it contains chapters on the collecting and mount- 

 ing of Lichens ; on their structure and organs; their geographical dis- 

 tribution. There is a key to the seventy-six genera, enumerated as in- 



