274 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 372. 



readiness for work. No delay is compelled as 

 in starting fires and getting up steam or in 

 waiting for horses, and immediately the alarm 

 is heard, the attendant can jump upon his en- 

 gine and start for the fire. In large cities, 

 ■with their paid fire departments where 

 the steam fire-engines always stand with 

 water hot and steam making, and the horses 

 and crews ready to move out of the house in 

 intervals measured by seconds, this is a mat- 

 ter of less consequence; the engine will sel- 

 dom fail to start promptly and to have steam 

 ready before reaching its position at the fire. 

 With small places, the case is very different. 

 There, the engine is cold, no crew at hand, 

 the horses often in a detached stable, or even 

 at some distance, and in many cases hand- 

 power only available. In such places, should 

 a source of supply be at hand for charging 

 batteries, the electric automobile fire-engine 

 would prove ideal. 



The advance made to date in the produc- 

 tion of locomotives for heavy work is illus- 

 trated by the completion, recently, for the 

 Atchison road, by the Schenectady Locomotive 

 Works, of a ten-wheel engine weighing 275,000 

 pounds; while the progress of the business of 

 locomotive construction is evidenced by the 

 acceptance of orders by the Baldwin Works to 

 an aggregate of seven hundred engines of all 

 styles for the year 1902. 



The Providence Journal owns an electric 

 automobile, which has been working since the 

 early autumn. It has traversed 1,000 miles 

 and is expected to make the record 1,500 or 

 1,800-before its batteries will require replace- 

 ment. The normal output is 22 amperes; but 

 it has risen to 80 when ascending the hill to 

 Brown University from Market Square. It has 

 shown the practicability of rising a 10 per 

 cent, gradient, although at serious cost in 

 life of battery. It is estimated by the Journal 

 that the cost is about that of keeping a single 

 horse and carriage. 



R. H. T. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 



THE 'brown disease' OF POTATOES. 



roE several years the potato crop of Nebras- 

 ka has been seriously damaged by a disease 



which causes the fibro-vascular bundles to turn 

 brown. This disease appears to be widely dis? 

 tributed in both America and Eittope, but as 

 yet nothing satisfactory has been published in 

 this country concerning the cause of the troub- 

 le. About the first of March, 1901, Mr. J. 

 A. Warren, now of the Santee Normal Train- 

 ing School, began a series of experiments in 

 the botanical laboratories of the University of 

 Nebraska in order to determine if possible 

 what produced the disease. He now reports 

 as follows: "My first cultures soon showed 

 tufts of mould filaments projecting from the 

 diseased bundles, and in a few days there were 

 many ripe fruits of Stysanus siemoniies 

 (Pers.) Corda. I repeated the experiment 

 many times, using both affected and unaffected 

 tubers from different fields. In nearly every 

 case the cultures containing brown bundles 

 produced Stysanus, while those containing no 

 brown bundles produced no Stysanus. Tubers 

 grown at Lincoln, Harvard, Humboldt and 

 Santee, Nebraska, and Cedar, Minnesota, were 

 used, always with the same results. These ex- 

 periments have now been continued for about 

 eight months, and I hope to follow them the 

 coming season. The results seem to show that 

 Stysanus siemoniies is the cause of the dis- 

 ease." 



The importance of this discovery lies in the 

 fact that this appears to be the first record 

 which connects Siysanus siemoniies with this 

 disease in this country, as well as the first 

 record of its occurrence. 



MORE ON THE PHILIPPINE FLORA. 



The Forestry Bureau of the Philippine Isl- 

 ands has issued a sixteen page pamphlet on 

 the 'Tree Species,' giving the scientific and 

 common names, the families and a little in- 

 formation in regard to the usefulness of the 

 trees in the industries. No less than sixty-one 

 families are represented, and the whole num- 

 ber of species enumerated is six hundred and 

 twenty-two. The larger families are Urtica- 

 ceae, with 45 species; Leguminosae, 42; Eu- 

 phorbiaceae, 30 ; Myrtaceae, 28 ; Eubiaceae, 28; 

 Sapotaceae, 24; and Lauraceae, 22. Of the 

 Cupuliferae there are 13 species, two of which 

 are species of Castanopsis,the remainder being 



