52 General Notes. [January, | 
GENERAL NOTES. 
BOTANY.! 
RELATION OF ELEVATION TO CHANGE OF COLOR IN FLOWERS. 
—Having seen many speculations on elevation as occasioning a 
change in the color of flowers, and Gla aggregata having been 
mentioned as an example, I will state that I found, this summer, 
at the border of Idaho and Oregon, lat. 47°, on Coplen’s butte, a 
hill of considerable elevation, large numbers of specimens grow- 
ing near each other, varying from almost scarlet to a nearly clear 
white. They seemed equally vigorous, and were so intermingled 
that no difference of slope or elevation would account for the 
variation. Near Hood river, Oregon, at a much lower elevation, 
found only specimens of a deep pink, approaching crimson.— 
Jos. W. Marsh, Forest Grove, Oregon. 
INSECT-DESTROYING FuNnGI.—Every one has doubtless often seen 
in the autumn and early winter, dead flies adhering to the ceiling 
and various objects in the room, and which, upon close inspec- 
tion, are seen to be swollen, with the abdomen covered witha 
white powdery substance. Dissection of fresh specimens of such 
flies reveals a great number of short, colorless, branching non- 
septate hyphz, whose granular protoplasm contains numerous 
oil globules. These hyphe are the vegetative organs of a para- 
sitic plant to which the name Lmpusa musce is frequently given, — 
and under this name it may be found briefly described in many __ 
books on fungi. It is now, however, pretty well established that 
_ we have here again another instance of a very common mistake 
in cryptogamic botany, that is, a description and classification 
based upon a knowledge of only one stage of the plant. Cohn 
ten years ago suspected this to be the case, but it remained for 
Brefeld and Nowakowski to demonstrate it, which they did in 
1877. The latest contribution to our knowledge of the group of 
plants to which the fly fungus is now referred, is by Giard 
(Deux espéces d’Entomophthora nouvelles pour la Flora Fran- 
cgaise) in the Bulletin Scientifique du Département du Nord, 
The results of these several investigations are that the old gen- 
era Empusa and Tarichium are now to be considered as respec- 
tively, the asexual and sexual stages of low forms of the order _ 
Saprolegniacez, and Giard proposes that the two old names be 
retained to designate the stages, and that the much more applica- 
ble name Entomophthora, proposed by Fresenius, be used to des- 
ignate the genus. The fly fungus will accordingly be known aS 
Entomophthora musceé Fres. 
The life-history of the Entomophthore may be briefly sum- 
marized as follows: 
1. Empusa stage-—The short colorless branching hyphe ramify 
through the tissues of the host, their swollen extremities eventu- 
1 Edited by Pror. C. E. Bessey, Ames, Iowa. 
