2332 Journal of Applied Microscopy 



will keep for several years when in a dry condition. It can be cultivated by 

 making beds pf the proper character in a warm cellar or greenhouse, or in the 

 open air in gardens. The fruiting bodies may be preserved in TO per cent, 

 alcohol. 



1. Take some of the white filaments or bands from the ground in which the 

 fungus is growing or from a brick of spawn, tease it out with needles and mount 

 in water. Examine under low and high power. Note the numerous hyphse of 

 the mycelium and draw. This is part of the vegetative mycelium which takes 

 up the nourishment from decaying substances in the soil. 



2. Examine " button mushrooms " of various sizes and make a series of 

 naked eye sketches showing how the button develops into the mature fruiting 

 body or toadstool. 



3. Study and sketch the mature fruiting body, showing the cap or pileus 

 with gills on the under side, and the stalk with the annulus. Note the irregular 

 fringe at the margin of the pileus. 



4. Find the origin of the annulus and the fringe at the margin of the pileus 

 by studying the veil or vellum of a fruiting body in which the pileus is just 

 beginning to expand. 



5. Cut off the pileus of a mature fruiting body and place it gills down- 

 ward on a piece of white paper. In this way a spore print may be obtained in a 

 few hours. Sketch the spore print. 



6. Mount some of the spores and draw under high power. Color and 

 shape ? 



7. Carefully cut cross sections of the gills of a pileus in which the spores 

 are not quite mature. Mount and study under high power. Draw a part of the 

 hymenial layer (spore-bearing layer), showing the paraphyses and the larger 

 basidia, each of which bears two spores. 



Ohio State University. JOHN H. SCHAFFNER. 



A Paraffine Bath Heated by Electricity.* 



Under the stimulus of disastrous explosions of gas in other museums and 

 some unpleasant experiences in our own, it was decided somewhat over 

 a year ago to replace, as far as practicable, heating by gas in the museum lab- 

 oratories with heating by electricity. The greatest danger from the use of gas 

 is incurred where two or more lights are kept constantly burning in the same 

 room. All of our constant burners for heating water-baths, warm ovens, etc., 

 have been for many years supplied with the Koch automatic cut off, so that in 

 case of accidental extinguishing of the flame, the cooling down of the burner 

 would automatically shut off the gas supply. But the lever of the Koch burner 

 will not always work, even though loaded with a weight greater than that which 

 it carries when it comes from the maker ; moreover, the metal on the expansion 

 and contraction of which the tripping apparatus depends, after a time loses to a 



* E. L. Mark, director of the zoological laboratory of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 

 Harvard College. — The American iVatiiralist, Vol. xxxvii, No. 434. 



