344 Miscellaneous. 
cent., oxygen 6°64 per cent., carbonic acid 5°35 per cent., being about 
the composition of the air from a well-manured soil. This carbonic 
acid carried into the leaves with the sap, and also that which they 
may absorb directly from the atmosphere, decomposed along with 
water under sunlight, must be the source of the glucose (C° H” O”) 
which it is the principal function of foliage to produce. This glu- 
cose, in fixing or abandoning the elements of water, becomes sugar, 
starch, cellulose, or other hydrates of carbon, which, in whatever part 
of the plant accumulated or deposited, and however transformed or 
retransformed, must always have originated from carbonic acid and 
water in the green parts of plants. In closing his present paper 
with some illustrations of this now familiar view, Boussingault an- 
nounces that his more recent experiments will enable him to demon- 
strate the direct formation of saccharine matter by the green parts of 
vegetables exposed to the light.—Silliman’s American Journal, July 
1866. 
Observations on a Malady of the Cotton-plant, called ‘‘ Pelagra,’”’ 
and on some Fungi which accompany it. By G. GASPARRINI. 
In the summer of 1863 some cotton-plants cultivated in the pro- 
vince of Naples were attacked by a disease which alarmed the culti- 
vators, who have become frightened about the attacks of Mucedinee, 
in consequence of the ravages of Oidiwm. The author examined the 
blackened stems of the plants attacked, and detected several Fungi 
of the family Mucedineze—amongst others Alternaria tenuis. This 
production did not appear to him to be autonomous, but one of the 
conidic forms of a small fungus of higher order, namely Pleospora 
(Spheria) herbacea. Ue regards Penicillium glaucum as a gonidie 
form of Alternaria. 'These, however, are pure hypotheses. 
M. Gasparrini does not attribute the disease of the cotton-piant 
to these plants, but considers it to be due to meteorological condi- 
tions. — Bibl. Univ. 1866, Bull. Sct. p. 167. 
Fossil Meduse. 
Professor Haeckel of Jena, who in 1865 called attention to the 
existence of well-preserved Medusze in the lithographic slates of 
Eichstadt, belonging probably to the families of Auquoride and Tra- 
chynemidee, has published, in a recent number of ‘ Leonhard und 
Geinitz’s Jahrbuch,’ a second notice of two other species of Medusze 
so well preserved that the family to which they belong can be ascer- 
tained beyond doubt. They are from the same locality, and belong 
to the Discophore, to the family of Rhizostemidee. The restoration 
which Professor Haeckel has been able to make from the specimens 
in his possession is quite satisfactory ; and the attention of geologists 
having been called to this subject, we may expect further interesting 
developments in the history of Acalephee, since it is now well known 
that even at the present time a kind of petrifaction of jellyfishes, 
when thrown upon sandy beaches, readily takes place.—Silliman’s 
American Journal, July 1866. 
