Record. xxvii 



bon; The Zoological Department of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, Berkeley; and the Museum of the Institute of Arts 

 and Sciences, Brooklyn. 



On behalf of Mr. Hurter, who represented the Academy at 

 the Fifth International Congress of Zoologists, held in Berlin 

 in 1901, the Secretary presented to the library of the Academy 

 a copy of the report of said Congress. 



Mr. Julius Hurter presented for publication a paper on the 

 herpetology of Missouri, illustrating his remarks by speci- 

 mens. 



Dr. Hermann von Schrenk presented some notes on the 

 bitter-rot disease of apples, referring particularly to recent 

 investigations and cultural experiments. He exhibited speci- 

 mens of the cankers formed on apple limbs by the bitter- 

 rot fungus (^Gloeosporium fructigenum^ Berk.) in various 

 orchards, and of artificial cankers produced in apple trees 

 at the Missouri Botanical Garden by inoculating branches 

 with spores from apples affected with the bitter-rot disease, 

 and spores from pure cultures of the fungus from cankers 

 occurring naturally in the orchard. Cultures showing the 

 perfect or ascus stage of the fungus were exhibited, and 

 attention was called to the fact that up to date the perfect 

 form had been found only in cultures and on several apples 

 kept in the laboratory. He announced the discovery two 

 weeks ago, by Mr. Perley Spaulding, of the perithecia and 

 perfectly formed asci and ascospores of the bitter-rot fungus 

 in several of the cankers produced on apple limbs from pure 

 cultures of the bitter-rot fungus as well as from bitter-rot 

 spores taken from cankers obtained in an affected -orchard. 

 This discovery is considered extremely important, as it dem- 

 onstrates, for the first time, beyond question, that the bitter- 

 rot fungus actually produces its perfect fruit in the cankers, 

 and thereby strengthens the contention that the cankers on 

 apple limbs are actually formed by the bitter-rot fungus. The 

 asci are apparently as evanescent in the cankers as the}^ are 

 in cultures, and it is therefore not at all improbable that many 

 of the supposed pycnidial spores found in both the natural 

 and artificially produced cankers were really ascospores. 



