ae 
1899 | NEWS 417 
Lecidea. These have all been compared with the Tuckerman herbarium, 
and as the rock lichens are peculiarly difficult to determine,they are the most’ 
valuable forms to be included in an authentic set. The author still needs the 
assistance of collectors, and the sets will be issued as fast as material can be 
obtained, 
Dr. A. F. Woops, of the United States Department of Agriculture, has 
an account in Sczence of April 7, of some interesting results he has recently 
obtained relative to a so-called disease of the vine. It appears that some 
yeats ago two French investigators, Viola and Sauvageau, discovered what 
they supposed to be a new parasitic organism causing much damage to the 
vine. Dr, Woods has conducted a similar investigation, and reaches the 
conclusion that their results are due entirely to the reagents employed in the 
study. That is, by using certain staining fluids, the contents of vegetable 
cells may be made to assume at will the form described by the French 
authors as their new organism. Dr. Woods was able to produce precisely 
Similar results in lily, tobacco, tomato, rose, hyacinth, and even in spirogyra 
cells. The complete report will soon be published by the Department of 
Agriculture.— Plant World, May. 
AT THE MEETING of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, on April 3, Mr. 
Trelease exhibited a plaster cast of a gigantic monstrosity of Cereus mar- 
ginatus, known as the Rosa de Organo, presented to the Missouri Botanical 
Garden by Professor Frederick Starr, and reported that this formation was 
locally abundant at points south from Aguas Calientes. The speaker exhib- 
a large number of comparable cactus monstrosities from the plant: 
houses of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the collection of the president 
_ of the Cactus Association of St. Louis, and a similar deformity of one of the 
on this teratolog- 
: ts 
From Nature for March 16, 1899, we take the following announcemen 
of forthcomi i : 
ing botanical books: ** by David Houston, 
“* i i s “a 
Wood: its natural history and industrial applications, : oa 
 Boulger.— The list of Messrs. C. J. Clay & Sons [Seecmizaceie 
