i6 The Ottawa Naturalist. 



interested in university work to note thiat the expedition to 

 Manitoba was followed in 1893 by one to the Bahamas, under 

 the same auspices, which was equally successful. When will 

 some Canadian university awake to the practical advantages of 

 such expeditions ? 



Might not our own Club with profit make an extended 

 excursion next summer into the scientifically unknown regions 

 of the Upper Gatineau or Ottawa ? L. 



HERMANN HELLRIEGEL 



Late Director, Experiment Station, Bernburg, Germany. 



Intelligence recently reached us of the death of Professor 

 Hellriegel, the eminent German chemist and vegetable 

 physiologist. His name will always be inseparably connected 

 with that most important of all modern discoveries in agriculture 

 — the assimilation of free atmospheric nitrogen by the 

 leguminosse ; for it will be remembered that it was the patient 

 researches of Professor Hellriegel and of his colleague Dr. 

 Wilfarth that established beyond dispute the ability of these 

 plants to draw, at least, a part of their nitrogen from the air. 

 Previous to the work of Hellriegel and Wilfarth, the results of 

 which were first published in 1886, it had been held that no 

 plants had the power to avail themselves of uncombined 

 nitrogen. These scientists, however, showed that the legumes 

 (clover, pea, bean, lupine, etc.) were exceptions to the law — if 

 law it is- — and had the distinguished honour of first pointing out 

 how these plants effect this free nitrogen assimilation by the 

 agency or symbiosis of certain micro-organisms residing in 

 tubercles or nodules upon their roots. 



By those who are aware that nitrogen is not only one of 

 the essential constituents of plant food but also the most costly 



