W. H. Brewer on Life in Hot and Saline waters, 3938 
unpleasant smarting sensation on the skin, and feels soapy to 
the touch. Yet it contains the larvee of a certain species of fly 
in immense numbers. These are cast up on the shore at times 
in such quantities that a great stench is produced. These larvae 
dried form an important item of food with the Mono Indians, 
who call it “ Koo-chah-bee.” The flies are seen in equally large 
numbers about the shores of the lake. 
imilar flies are mentioned as occurring at the Great Salt Lake, 
by various persgns. Lieut. Stansbury speaks of their immense 
numbers in his rt, but we have no facts as to their specific 
identity. 
New Haven, March 26, 1866. 
nt note on the tenacity of life of the 
seeds and spores of some plants, piggred for this place by Prof. Brewer. 
ote by Wm. H. Brewer—Epw and Corin (Annales des Sci. 
Nat.,. [2], Bot. I, 257) made experiments on the power of resisting ele- 
We append the following’ 
were not sufficiently exact in either case. 
Balfour states (Class Book of Botany, p. 628) “the seeds of Phytolac- 
ca decandra and of the Raspberry have been known to germinate after 
exposure for a short time to the heat of boiling syrup,” but does not give 
his authority. 
Hemmingway states (Ann. of Nat. Hist., [1], viii, 317) that the seeds 
of Sambucus nigra germinated after being twice boiled in making wine, 
being present during the vinous fermentation, and remaining twenty 
months in the dregs of the cask. : 
the spores of Fungi, Berkley remarks (Outlines of British 
ent n ascertaine 
More to the point are the experiments of the eminent cryptogamic 
botanist, Payen, on the red mould in the interior of bread, which created 
such a stir in Paris nearly twenty years ago, This mould, the Oidium 
Am. Jour. Sct.—Seconp Series, Vou. XLI, No. 123,—May, 1866. 
50 
