Meyen's Report for 1839 on Physiological Botany. 405 



M. Balsamo Crivelli has published some new observa- 

 tions on the origin and development of Botrytis Bassiatia*, 

 and of another parasitic kind of mould, a subject which was 

 treated of in our Report for 1836 (Berlin, 1837, p. 107). M. 

 Crivelli found that the vesicles of which the fat consists can 

 pass into Botrytis, and he convinced himself that the "corps 

 vesiculaires" of M. Audouin were nothing more than swim- 

 ming fat globules. A cut was made in the side of a fat 

 caterpillar, and the exuding sap exhibited the supposed vesi- 

 cular bodies of Audouin, which were certainly nothing but 

 globules of fat. The following morning the interior of the 

 caterpillar was covered with Ascophora muceclo. The spores 

 of Ascophora were introduced into the bodies of four chry- 

 salises, and three days afterwards the grains of fat could be 

 seen full of vegetating filaments. Finally, M. Crivelli re- 

 tains his idea, that in the fat of the silkworm there can take 

 place such changes as to render its component parts capable 

 of spontaneously producing mould, which property the fat 

 may then impart to healthy caterpillars. 



M. Turpinf explains why butter which has been melted 

 and allowed to cool becomes so seldom mouldy : the treatise 

 is of great length, for he mentions a number of cases in which 

 mouldiness was observed without being able to assume that 

 the seeds proceeded from the air ; also the microscopical 

 structure of butter, both before and after its fusion, is most 

 circumstantially described. The following points may be 

 mentioned : the mould which, in common butter, is produced 

 from the lacteous globules contained therein cannot be pro- 

 duced in melted butter, because these globules ai'e then 

 covered with the oil of butter. M. Turpin remarks, that the 

 explanation of the production of mould on the surface of or- 

 ganic matter by a continual ' rain ' of seeds of all kinds of 

 mould must at present appear ridiculous ; but that the ex- 

 planation by ' generatio spontanea ' must be very limited, 

 and also more clearly defined. Nature produces the mould 

 in two ways : either directly out of the globuline of organic 

 matter when this has ceased to be under the influence of 

 vitality, or from spores which it produces itself. 



M. Hanover % has made ' Observations on a Contagious 

 Conferva Formation on the Water Salamanders ;' he saw the 



• Communicated by Freiherr von Cesati in the Linnsea of 1839, p. 118- 

 123. 



t Sur le singulier caractere physique et microscopique que prend le 

 beurre, etc. Comptes Rendus du 9 Dec, p. 748-762. 



X Miiller's Archiv fiir xAnatomie, 1839, Heft 5. 



