May 10, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



509 



seas ; coutinents and oceans and their per- 

 manence. Land surfaces ; weathering and 

 denudation by wind, rivei*s and ice ; defor- 

 mations of the surface. The forms of the 

 land ; plains, hills of accumulation, valleys, 

 basins, mountains, depressions, caverns. 

 The sea ; its movements, coasts and bot- 

 tom ; islands. 



The chief deficiency of the book is the 

 scarcitj' of illusti-atious and the rough qual- 

 ity of nearly all the few cuts that are intro- 

 duced. Many are merely diagrams, often 

 with excessive vertical exaggeration. This 

 is to be regretted in a subject where graphic 

 aid of the highest (juality is necessary for 

 the adequate presentation of the facts. But 

 as the work is in two volumes of 471 and 

 690 pages, the omission of illustrations has 

 e^^dentlJ• been a matter of necessity. 



W. M. Davis. 



Harvard University. 



NOTES UPON AGRICULTURE (II.). 

 MUSCARDINE DISEASE OF CHI^'CH-BUGS. 



One of the most serious of insect depre- 

 dations to wheat and corn is that caused by 

 the chinch-bug, and for years methods of 

 checking it by employing a parasitic fungus 

 have been the subject of research. In 

 Kansas special appropriations have been 

 made by the Legislature to determine the 

 best means of propagating and applying the 

 virus. The latest information upon this 

 subject comes in the shape of a sixty-page 

 bulletin with eight plates (No. 38, March. 

 '95) from the Illinois Expei'iment Station 

 prepared bj- Dr. Forbes. The fungus experi- 

 mented with is Sporotrichum rjlobulijerum . 

 Speg., which was cultivated successfully 

 ui)on a mixture of corn meal and beef broth 

 and afterwards distributed to farmei-s in the 

 chinch-bug infested portions of the State. 



The "White Muscardine (Sporotrichium) 

 spreads most rapidly in the field when the 

 weather is moist and the ' catch ' is quickest 

 in the low spots in the field and among 



fallen herbage. Professor Forljes is of the 

 opinion that the disease may be developed 

 ^\'ithout infection by artificially producing 

 the above conditions by trampling down the 

 grain in spots or cutting and stocking small 

 portions as starting points for the infection. 

 It was observed that mites feed upon the 

 Muscardine and in some of the artificial 

 cultures eat up ' the last vestige of the 

 fungus.' The Sporotrichium lives upon many 

 kinds of insects, and a plate is given of the 

 appearance of it upon a leaf skeletonizer 

 (Carnarsia), June Beetle (Lachnosterua), 

 "Walnut caterpillar (Datana). 



bacteriosis of rutabaga. 

 The number of diseases of plants of bac- 

 terial origin is rapidly on the increase, or, 

 more strictly writing, the nature of these 

 troubles is in these later daj's being better 

 understood. A portion of Bulletin 27 of 

 the Iowa Experiment Station is devoted to 

 a disease of rutabagas that Professor Pam- 

 mel finds, through a long course of bacteri- 

 ological study, to be caused by a microor- 

 ganism which he names Bacilhis campestris 

 u. sp., and figures in details in a plate. 

 This disease is distinguished bj' its strong 

 odor, the decay usuallj* beginning at the 

 crown of the root, the fibro-vascular zone 

 becomes black, while the softer portions of 

 the root become soft and finallj- wateiy. 

 Healthy roots were caused to decay by in- 

 troducing the Bacilli, previously isolated 

 by cultural methods, into their tissue. 



WEED seeds in WINTER WINDS. 



It is well known that winds play an im- 

 portant role in the distribution of seeds. 

 Professor BoUey. in the Xorth Dakota Ex- 

 periment Station Bulletin (No. 17, March, 

 1895), records that in two stjuare feet of a 

 three-weeks old and three-inch deep snow 

 drift upon an ice pond ten yards from any 

 weeds he found nineteen weed seeds, and 

 and in another drift quite similarly situated 

 thirtj--two seeds representing nine kinds 



