a09 VARIATIONS OF SPECIES. 
water for a long time, to fully supplant or extract the entire 
juices, as is often practiced by the best ship-builders and 
honest wheelwrights, carpenters, etc., who regard a worthy 
and enduring reputation. It is said that the ships in the 
Crimea Sea suffered more from this insidious foe than from 
the ravages of fire, or the shots and shells of their enemies. 
We have seen samples of this light, crumbly, papery shelled 
wood, with its weight and strength totally consumed. 
A strong wash of corrosive sublimate solution over the 
timbers of cellars on which these deliquescent or weeping 
morels so dampen it, are at once rendered dry, and the evil 
often entirely arrested in the midst of its havoc. 
Lastly, most of us have heard, and many have no doubt 
seen, specimens purporting to be a caterpillar turned into a 
plant, or some such similar foolishness. We have one in the 
herbarium which any one may see at their leisure. This is 
one of those parasitic fungi, that rob and kill in order to 
supplant and live on others gains; the dying grub’s head 
never sprouts up as a plant, but the seeds or spores of the 
Spheria Robertsii alight upon the caterpillar of a moth, the 
Hepialus, when it buries itself in the mossy woods to undergo 
metamorphosis, and by its growth destroys the napping 
grub. Two species of these are used by the Chinese, who 
sell them in bundles of eight or nine, with the worms at- 
tached, which they place in the stomach of a duck and roast 
for the patient to eat. 
VARIATIONS OF SPECIES. 
BY A. H. CURTISS. 
Ix the March number of the NATURALIST we observe an 
account of a remarkable growth of Bidens chrysanthemoides, 
and as the writer seems to fear that his story may be con- 
sidered an exaggeration, we come to his support with one 
