1896.] Vegetable Physiology. 319 



the roots of whortleberry near Washington, D. C. Specimens from the 

 latter source were submitted to various students of fungi in Washing- 

 ton last autumn for identification, and the writer had full opportunity 

 to examine this substance. Some of the chambers were filled with it, 

 others partly filled, and others free from it. It is a colorless much 

 septate mycelium, inclined to be constricted at the septa, and in places 

 consisting of rounded, nearly iso-diametric, colorless, rather thick-walled 

 cells, not sufficiently differentiated from the mycelium to be considered 

 as true spores. It appears to be the mycelial or oidial stage of some 

 higher fungus, probably of some Ascomycete. From its dutribatkffl 

 in the burrows and the behavior of the beetles toward it, there can be 

 little doubt that it serves them for food. Whether like the ants they 

 actually cultivate it, is another question and one more difficult to solve. 

 In Germany, where this ambrosia was first discovered, Prof. R. Goethe, 

 Director of the Royal Lehranstalt fur Obst-Wein-und Gartenbau zu 

 Geisenheim am Rhein, has recently published an account of its discov- 

 ery in the chambers of XfUbcrua dupar. Prof. Goethe's' brief note 

 ($.2o,Berkhte d. Kg!. Lrhr>tn*t<ilt etc.) is accompanied by a good 

 figure, judging from which the fungus appears to be the same U that 

 found in the chambers of Corthyllm puiirt.iti^imm near Washington. 

 This fungus is said to be the same as that found in 1883 in the burrows 

 of Xyleborw in cherry trees at Kamp am Rhein. Concerning the use 

 made of this fungus by the beetles he makes the following statement : 

 Seine Wucherungen dienen ganz unzweiflehaft den Kafern zur 

 Nahrung, denn man sieht deutlich, wie der Ueberzug stiickweise 

 abgeweidet wird. Further study of this subject would undoubtedly 

 bring to light many interesting things. In the next number of the 

 Naturalist I hope to publish a note from Mr. Hubbard on this sub- 

 ject.— Erwin F. Smith. 



"White Ants as Cultivators of Fungi.— In connection with the 

 preceding it may be worth while to reprint part of a note which ap- 

 peared in Grevillea, June, 1874, p. 165-6, relative to the occurrence of 

 fungi in the nests of termites in India. A writer in the <;.„*,»,•*' 

 Chronicle stated that he had never seen any fungi on or in nests of white 

 ants except very small ones less than the size of a pin head. In op- 

 position to this Mr. W. F. Gibbon, Doolha, Goruckpore, wrote to the 

 Horticultural Society of India as follows: "I send you now a bottle 

 containing mushrooms I extracted a few days ago from the center of a 

 white ant hillock. When I collected them they were in appearance 

 like asparagus, over 14 inches in length, and the people about here 



