NOTES. 123 
and on examination with the microscope had the satisfaction of 
finding many of them. It seems to be proved then that the spores 
are floating freely in the atmosphere, and are inhaled into the air 
passages. The heat of the animal and the moisture of the mucous 
surfaces favor their germination and growth; and it seems to 
me possible that the epidemic catarrhal horse disease, and similar 
difficulties of man, may be caused by these vegetating spores, the 
greater or less prevalence of this class of diseases being governed 
by the relative numbers of the germs in air at different seasons, ` 
some seasons being more favorable to their development than 
others.—G. W. Morrnousr, Wayland, New York. 
Organisms 1N Cuicaco Drixkinc Warter.— Mr. H. H. Babcock 
discusses this subject in a paper read at the Dubuque meeting 
of the American Association. His former suspicions are con- 
firmed, that these forms are not at home in the southern end of 
the Lake, but are brought down from the north by a surface current 
along the western side of the Lake. The existence of such a 
current he finds further proved by the vegetation upon the shores, 
as he observed at least eleven species of plants established in 
isolated and evidently accidental positions on the shores near or 
below Chicago, but which belong at the northern end of the Lake 
or in the region of the sources of its water. 
_ Pwe Porren iN Laxe Micnican.— At the Dubuque meeting of 
the American Association, Dr. R. H. Ward made a report on a 
specimen of viscid-looking water from Lake Michigan, near Racine. 
The water of the lake was similarly thickened for miles and was 
generally believed by the neighboring residents to be of an infuso- 
rial character. It contained no infusoria worth speaking of; but 
was almost filled with pine pollen which was interesting from its 
enormous quantity, and from the fact that its source could not 
have been near by, but must have been in the pine forests far to 
the north, the pollen being brought down by the southerly cur- 
rent along the western shore of the Lake. 
NOTES. 
AT a meeting of the California Academy of Sciences held Octo- 
ber 7, 1872, Mr. W. H. Dall presented a portion of the husk and 
inner shell of a cocoanut picked up on the north side of the Island 
