NOTES ON WINTER BOTANY. i) 
discovered growing quite happily at a depth of eight metres 
below the surface of the water.* 
So a squirrel nesting in a tree infected by Polyporus Betu- 
linus might produce infection on any one of the trees that it 
visits during a very long time, and the spore might sleep three 
or four years in a crevice of bark until it got the chance of 
germination. 
The air, of course, is, as we know, full of fungus spores. 
Such minute dust particles as they are must be carried enormous 
distances. Klebahn found thousands of rust spores deposited 
on plates (12 cm. in diameter) placed in the open air, and 
Saitot has carried out similar experiments. 
But, on the whole, I think that insects and other small 
animals have the chief part in this work of conveying those 
minute destroyers of dead wood and breakers up of vegetable 
matter to their appointed place for functioning. 
The number of smaller fungi recorded for this district is 
very small. 
The following minute agents of decay have been found by 
myself in Kirkcudbrightshire :— 
7361 Peziza (Humaria) humosa. On refuse, by-path to river 
between Hardlawbank Bridge and Lincluden, December 
22nd, 1898. 
360 Ascobolus viridis. Same place and date. 
1322 Hymenoscypha scutula. Dead herbaceous stems, Dalry, 
October, 1907. 
1325 H. fructigena. Rose twigs, Dalry, October, 1907. 
1328 H. coronata. Herbaceous stems, Dalry, October, 1907. 
1332 H. clavata. Wet herbaceous stems, Newton, October, 
1907. 
1345 H. petiolorum. Exact colour of dead oak leaf, small wood 
near Cluden Mills, October, 1907. 
364 Lachnella calycina. Larch disease, Newton (very common), 
December, 1898. 
1326 Phyllachora junci. On rushes, Bogue, Dalry, October, 
1907. 
* Lindau, Botan. Centralblatt Band 96, p. 41. 
+ The numbers refer to my herbarium (Cryptogamous). 
