INVERTEBRATA, CRYPTOGAMIA, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 129 



the secidia are found on Taraxacum, Urttca, and other plants. Numerous 

 other genetic relationships are established in the paper. 



Vine-mildew or False Oidium-* — This disease makes its ap- 

 pearance from time to time in vineyards in the United States, and has 

 recently, according to J. E. Planchon, been detected in France on 

 stocks imported from America. It is frequently confounded with the 

 true Oidium, but has in reality more resemblance to the potato-disease, 

 being caused by a very similar fungus, Peronospora viticola. It 

 attacks chiefly the herbaceous parts of the vine, especially the leaves 

 of the second summer-shoots, more rarely the stems or berries. M. 

 Planchon docs not regard its attacks as a danger so great as to 

 counterbalance the advantages to be derived from the importation 

 into Europe of American vine-stocks free from the phylloxera. 



Cherry-laurel Disease.! — A. Bertolini has had his attention called 

 to a hitherto undescribed parasitic fungus which attacks the ripe fruit 

 of the Primus laurocerasus and for which he proposes the name 

 Oidium Passerinii. It makes its aj)pearance as irregular white spots, 

 composed of filaments which invest the epicarp of the fruit, and 

 from which rises a delicate down, perceptible by the aid of a lens. 

 The former compose the ordinary hyphae of the Erysiphece ; the latter 

 is the conidia, consisting of ovoid cells placed one on another. In 

 an early stage of development they constitute a tube undivided inter- 

 nally, but exhibiting constrictions on the outside ; at the period of 

 maturity this becomes separated by division-walls into the separate 

 conidia at the constrictions, producing a necklace-like structure. At 

 the final stage the conidia detach themselves in succession. Observed 

 at this period under the Microscope, the fungus appears to consist of 

 two layers, one inferior of tubes or elongated cells, the upper layer 

 composed of the ovoid conidia reunited irregularly and containing 

 granules of ovoid form and varying in number. 



New Hyphomycete.j — Professor W. Voss describes, under the 

 name ScolicotricJmm Ungeri, a new fungus belonging to the Hyphomy- 

 cetes which he found, in Upper Carinthia, on the fallen radical leaveH 

 of Polygonum viviparum. In the same paper he gives a list of the 

 subterranean fungi found by him in Carinthia, and of the epiphytal 

 fungi from the " Cerna prst " or " black earth," a mountain range in 

 the same district. This latter includes the rare Puccinia Gentiance 

 on Gentiana crnciata, Exoascus Alni var. strobilinus on the cones of 

 Alnus incana, and many otlicrs, numbering in all upwards of thirty 

 species growing on twenty-eight different hosts. 



Classification of the Discomycetes.§ — Mr. E. Boudier suggests 

 the separation of the Discomycotes into two very natural sections, 

 according as tlio mode of dehiscence of tlio asci is with or without an 

 operculum, calling the first section Opcrcidate Discomycctcs, or simply 



• 'Comptos Rcndiis,' Isxxix. (1879) p. (JOO. 



t 'Nuov. Giorn. liot. Ital.,' xi. (187!)) p. o8J). 



X 'Oesterr. Bot. Zcitschr.,' xxix. (1871)) p. 313. 



§ 'Grevillea,' viii. (1879j p. 45. 

 VOL. III. K 



